Teacher Appreciation Week
Honoring (all of) our first teacher.
My mom is a milestone and holiday mastermind. She maintains a rolodex of one-size-fits-one cards for birthdays and special events so she can honor the passage of trips around the sun or Father’s day and even extra occasions that Hallmark hasn’t made official. Just because days.
Her diligence in translating thoughts to action is impressive. She used to compile gifts for the eight days of Hanukkah over the course of the full year, wrapping them up and numbering them according to which one to give on which day so they built to a grand crescendo gift like a My Little Pony stable or a bike or something.
She had often wrapped the presents so far in advance that by the time Hanukkah actually rolled around, she found the process of unwrapping nearly as surprising as we did.
For years I assumed this trait was both genetic and tied to the second X chromosome, as my mom’s sisters also both sent (and still send) cards on my birthday. They’ve added Eric and my wedding anniversary (which we both would routinely forget were it not for the cards/texts from my mom and aunts), my kids’ birthdays, even Eric’s birthday.
But it must be one of those genes that skips generations, as I am not like this at all. Instead of being surprised by the gifts I’ve thoughtfully wrapped months in advance, the special events themselves – birthdays or Father’s day or our anniversary – seem to reveal themselves on the day they are happening. This transpires even in the face of time’s obvious march, automated calendar reminders be damned!
So it goes that we are half-way through teacher appreciation week, just past Earth Day (and month), sandwiched by Clara’s 7th birthday, Nora’s 5th, Eric’s birthday too, and our 17th (I think – Mom, do I have that right?) wedding anniversary – and I, as the founder of a non-profit dedicated to teachers and nature, mother to the just-seven and soon-to-be 5-year-olds, and wife most relevant to the anniversary in question – am woefully unprepared for those days.
I know people say things about how presents aren’t what counts. I have adopted this philosophy as a matter of survival, but it’s also hard to argue with the thoughtfulness my mom always has embodied in her gift giving. I suppose my love language is just different.
I am sure it’s not for lack of appreciating teachers or the Earth or my mom or my kids or my husband or my marriage that I am always caught flat-footed in the face of these meaningful moments. I won’t offer the cliche “busy” excuse. That just trivializes days honoring some of the people I hold most dear – and Mother Nature.
So instead I’ll have a go at teacher appreciation week which hasn’t yet fully passed me by.
Almost two years ago, a feisty, talented young teacher dropped some wisdom that fundamentally transformed my worldview.
We were sitting there in a grove of ponderosas, the air sweet vanilla, hot but bearable in the shade, the sky all blue Colorado sunshine, when she said.
“Nature’s not our ‘third teacher.’ Nature is our first teacher.”
I have no idea what I actually did in that moment, but I like to think I looked up at the swaying branches of the trees above me, touched my hand on the fallen needles and dry grasses beneath me, and breathed deeply.
I know I knew she was right.
She was challenging an assertion we (Good Natured Learning) had made that leveraged the Reggio Emilia concept of the environment as the “third teacher” which basically says that the classroom plays an important role in learning.
We had extended Reggio’s metaphor to outdoor classrooms, thus describing nature as the “third teacher.”
It seemed so obvious. The concept of environment/container as impacting learning made so much sense to me when I first heard it that I (embarrassingly) never even wondered about the first and second teachers. Who were/are they? When I finally looked it up, I learned that Reggio positions parents first, teacher-teachers second, and physical environment (classroom) third.
These rankings notwithstanding, that incisive and insightful comment has turned and churned and connected and catalyzed and metabolized in my brain for hundreds of days now.
On Monday, when I discovered it was teacher appreciation week (who saw that coming?) and I was feeling guilty and unprepared to adequately appreciate the many incredible teachers in my life — personal and professional, past and present — it came back to me in full force.
So here, on hump day of teacher appreciation week, on the heels of Earth Day (which I also failed to meaningfully commemorate) and tucked in just before Mother’s Day (bear in mind that I believe Mother Nature is the Mother of all mothers and – well – everyone), I want to appreciate Mother Nature. For being our first teacher.
I doubt she wants a Starbucks gift card or a “world’s best teacher” mug (I’m not convinced many human teachers want those things either), so I’ll have to think of something more. Some immediate ideas are planting some seeds, tending Clara’s garden (with Clara, of course!), and writing this now.
For her part, here’s Nora’s all-in Earth Day appreciation for our first teacher.
❤️, B
PS - Thanks also to all of the teachers — of all forms and ranks — in my life.