It’s graduation time throughout the country. Kids are moving up or out of school every day now. As these rites of passage take place, it’s more apparent to me that teachers are more important to the human race than probably nine out of every ten of the rest of us.
This is something I’ve gleaned from almost 31 years of life on this planet. Great teachers are definitely worth more the human race than everyone else combined. While I can’t say that every teacher I had in school fell into the category of “Great,” I had two who influenced my life more than they, and even I myself, realized.
Many times I’ve admitted that I’m a reformed Conservative. In my early years I was a carbon copy of my parents. I shared with fervent conviction their religious and political take on every subject. I imagine was quite the little asshole in my early adolescence, in other words. First my views on religion shifted, and slowly my Conservative views started eroding out from underneath me, especially as I got further away from my somewhat sheltered small-town upbringing.
I had a realization recently that I owed much of Progressive thinking to two extremely influential teachers I had starting in the seventh grade. These two men seemed like cooler, hipper versions of my Dad (who I’ve learned is actually “cooler” than I gave him credit for, but that’s a subject for a different blog). They were both enormously talented musicians and artists and they collaborated together on several of the musicals I was privileged to be part of in my younger days.
Andy Russell and Reno Holler entered my life at almost the same exact time. Andy was my homeroom teacher and also the school’s music teacher and band instructor. Andy and I would butt-heads as I tended to do with nearly every teacher since hormones started flowing. However, I always felt like while I could annoy the living piss out of Andy, he still saw that at heart there was something not so shitty about me, and it helped us develop a relationship where I could look up to him, and he could help discourage my most annoying personality traits.
Reno Holler first had contact with me in sixth grade. He’d written a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and I was given the role of one of the narrators in the story. Luckily for me the dialogue Reno gave me was mostly light-hearted and comical in nature, feeding into my tendencies to be an absolute ham. I can trace back the “bug” biting me to that year, and specifically that play. The next year I was fortunate enough to have Reno take over for one of my teachers who went out on maternity leave, giving me even more exposure to Reno.
Thankfully Reno and Andy saw something in my talents (raw and as unrefined as they were and maybe still are), and they encouraged my artistic tendencies like my parents never did or have. They didn’t just nurture my creativity though; they gave me license to embrace my own thoughts and emotions when it came to life. I can remember so clearly the two of them telling me that I was “too smart to be a Conservative.”
Now, I’m sure that Andy and Reno don’t think that all Conservatives are stupid; but this thought stuck in my brain. I started to tear away at the onion skin that was my world view, and I adapted their words to mean that I was too smart to accept any political view as dogma. As it turned out, I did turn into a very radically Liberal person, and I do personally feel the more enlightened and educated views are the most progressive in society, and therefore they are more intelligent than Conservative ideals.
It’s not just the political views that these two men helped me develop though. Both Reno and Andy were just “cool” in a way that can’t be overstated. Reno had strong ties to rock and roll through his composer father, and Andy was a really brilliant musician himself. They were young, in their mid thirties, and therefore not so far removed from the adolescents they taught that they couldn’t relate.
Being a father of two sons now, I can honestly say I pattern quite a bit of parenting after Reno and Andy. I try as hard as I can to be understanding and forgiving; and while I fail as much as I succeed, it’s nice to have something to strive for. I hope for their sake that my boys are blessed to eventually have teachers in their lives that fill as many necessary roles for them as Reno and Andy did for me. Of course, I also I hope I can fill those roles for them too.
Thanks Andy. Thanks Reno. You two meant more to me than I could possibly know so many years ago. I’m lucky to not only call you teachers and mentors, but friends.
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