Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Everyday I select a few teachers. Note, no one else selects them for me. It is all my selection. As with most aspects of life, there are good and bad points here.

We all have teachers – people from whom we learn things. Tiny, rural Loranger High School graduated me a few months before our nation celebrated its 200th birthday. I went to college (a few times), but the majority of time since departing high school I have continued to have hundreds of dozens of teachers. The vast majority of these teachers have never stood at the front of anything that resembled a classroom.

Let’s define some terms in a sort of backwards way:

Teacher: if anyone learns anything from you, you are a teacher.

Student: if anyone influences you in any way, you are a student.

Hence, if I spend more than a few minutes listening to a person or reading something written by that person, I have selected that person as my teacher. Hmm, now we are starting to wander in the valley of the shadow of death. “Yeah,” you might mumble low and slow, “now and then I watch whats-his-name on TV or listen to whats-his-name on the radio, but they aren’t my teachers, right?”

See the above definitions. Ouch.

Everyday, we select teachers. We select people who influence us. We imitate people who we have selected from an almost limited supply of choices. So, I end with a little question for myself:

Which teachers will I select today?