Believe it or not, I was voted “Teacher’s Pet” in my graduating class. To this day, I don’t know how that was the case. Regardless of whether I agreed with it, I had to take a yearbook picture with Judith Shannon, my dreaded English teacher.
I might have been the pet for other teachers, but not Judith. She was my arch nemesis. She and I didn’t always get along. Mrs. Shannon was the stereotypical tough teacher that made us work harder than we desired. She also took great joy in having a grading scale much tougher than any of the other teachers. She’d make us learn new vocab words, conjugate sentences, figure out what in the world was going on in Shakespeare’s head, and worst of all, write in those stinking journals for 10 minutes straight. Mrs. Shannon would also slap the lectern (or the palm of your hand) with a ruler as our class recited “Am, Are, Is, Be, Was, Where, Been…” in unison.
One day toward the end of the year, I remember Mrs. Shannon giving our whole class an already stamped postcard with her address on it. She said something to the effect that we should write her one day and let her know how we were doing in college or in life. I don’t remember my exact words, but this was around the time Wayne’s World was a popular movie and Wayne would say “Shyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.”
Fast forward 25 years later and I guess monkeys were flying in a way. I sent Mrs. Shannon a copy of my first published book The Leadership Playbook. I thanked her in the acknowledgement section of that book.
She responded back with a note that said, “You obviously write extremely well.” I guess that old English teacher was a smart lady after all. She knows what’s up!
Full disclosure, though, I was the one to put that part of the note in quotation marks. She didn’t. What she put in quotation marks was “I’m never going to write you a letter.” Oops. I guess she remembered my rebellious comments 25 years ago, which by the way, weren’t as bad as those in Wayne’s World.
Well, I guess Mrs. Shannon got the last laugh, in a way.
The moral of the story?
If you are a teacher, coach, parent, leader, manager, or pastor, don’t give up on people. Don’t get discouraged if they aren’t responding they way you’d like. Continue to do the right things. You never know when the seeds you plant will grow into a beautiful flower (not that I am calling myself a beautiful flower).
And for all of us … don’t be a punk like I was. Appreciate the efforts others are putting forth to help. Even if we don’t like what we are being taught we can still demonstrate respect. We can still learn. We don’t know it all.
Just like that teenager long ago, who knows what the future holds. Maybe what you don’t like now will turn out to be an important part of your life later on.