The Teachers we Remember | Julie Hasson | TEDxEustis

I want to start by telling you something that happened in the supermarket. I was in the produce section looking for the perfect avocado when I heard someone call my name. I looked up and thought that face looks familiar. There was something about the dimples and the brown eyes and when this beautiful 22 year old woman approached, I recognized the girl she taught in second grade, it was Ali and we stood there by the avocados and talked about her current life and talked about what he

remember

ed from our year. together and Ali asked me Miss Hassan, does she

remember

reading the book Stone Fox in our class?

I said yes, that's one of my favorite books and she asked Miss Hassan, do you remember the part where Willie was winning the dog sled race and all of a sudden? his dog's reflector collapsed and then Stone Fox caught up to him and stopped and made all the other runners stop so Willie could pick up his dog and carry him across the finish line and I said yes of course , I remember that part and then she asked. Remember what you told us at the end of that book and I had to say no because I have no idea what I told those kids 15 years ago?

I'll be honest, I barely remember what I said to the students yesterday, but Ali does. She said that you told us that the winners are not always the fastest, sometimes the winners are just the brave ones who don't give up and then she said something that every teacher longs to hear, she said that sometimes things get very difficult and I feel like giving up I think about that book and I think about what you told us and I continue talking for another hour I hugged her and then I saw my student return to the world and not the conversation, buying the avocados made me I feel very good because I want to be the type of teacher that students remember, not that what all

teachers

really want is to leave a lasting impact by teaching these lessons that students carry and use throughout their lives, but that conversation also made me think about the kids that wasn't like Ally.

I have taught hundreds, perhaps thousands of children throughout my career and I know that I have not left a lasting impact on all of them. I wondered how many I couldn't connect with in a meaningful way and how many. Impact opportunities that I missed and most importantly, I thought about how I could have a greater impact and how I could do it more consistently and my meeting with Ally also reminded me of the

teachers

who had an impact on my life. I thought about Miss Russell, who taught me to read, Miss Barrentine, who helped me find my voice, and Mr.

Reza Nene, who forever changed the way I see the world, who the teachers are, do you remember what the Things they said or did that stick with you a few years ago? I became a teacher. I still teach now, I teach teachers, which is very difficult because they know all my teaching tricks, you can't achieve anything beyond the teachers, but the other part of my job is doing research and my focus is on the impact of teachers. I knew that as a qualitative researcher, if I really wanted to understand the impact of teachers, I had to go out and interview people who had once been students in kindergarten through twelfth grade—okay, these people aren't hard to find.

I suspect this TEDx audience is full of alumni. I just needed to locate where they congregate, so I showed up in town. parks craft fairs farmers markets college campuses with this sign that said let's talk about a teacher, remember and people stopped to talk to me I know I was as surprised as you were because sitting in the park with a sign was not my usual method of information collection, but it was the best crazy idea I ever had because I learned so much about the impact of the masters from the people I met. I have now spoken to hundreds of people between the ages of 18 and 85 and I realize that everyone has a story about something special. teacher, but then I started to wonder why we remember some teachers so clearly but not others, so I took the data, laid it all out and started analyzing it and the answer became apparent, you see, we don't remember being taught, we remember that they taught us. transformed we remember the teachers who helped us change and grow over the course of a semester or a year, they facilitate our transformation so that when we leave their classes we are not the same people as the day we met them and although these memorable teachers teach different subjects and bodies different teaching styles have different personalities and passions they have something important in common they constantly leave an impact because they are intentional about that impact their impact happens by design it doesn't happen by chance or by default they have this long-term vision and don't get caught up In the little things and minutiae of everyday life, it's as if they were too busy searching for our potential and the teachers we remember loved and appreciated us just as we were, but they also held this vision of who we could become and realized their role and making that vision a reality, so under this big overarching theme of transformation, the data was divided into three main categories, ways in which teachers changed the hearts of students, ways in which teachers changed the minds of the students and ways in which the teachers changed the students. lives I would like to start with hearts when teachers changed their hearts they did things like increase our self-esteem, make us feel more valued and important, they spread compassion and helped us become more compassionate people and they magically cultivated this sense of belonging so that we felt like we belonged to your classroom and to your students at school.

It's one of my favorite stories in the data that tells of the way a teacher can change a child's heart. It came from a man named John. John is a military veteran. He is a career firefighter. He has accumulated seven decades of wisdom. I promised him he would describe it that way. He's a tough guy, but when he sat next to me at a craft fair to tell me about his third-grade teacher, Miss Andrews, he started crying and said, "You know." I grew up poor in a home plagued by addiction and abuse, and when I got to school I saw other kids in their clean, ironed school clothes and thought they must be loved the way I longed to be my teacher.

Miss Andrews used to invite me. I went to her house after school to have a snack, somehow she recognized that I was hungry and one day, when I was leaving her house, she handed me a package that was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string and I remember having run home to open it. that package and when I did it, I spent hours looking at these three new neatly ironed school shirts that were folded inside and John said it was a changing moment in my life because I realized that someone does love me, someone does care about me, Sir.

Andrews helped him understand that he was worthy of love and belonging. John's story helped me understand that it's not really the gestures that have such an impact on students, but the meaning that those gestures describe, not the snacks or the t-shirts. It was the way those snacks and sharp objects made him feel about himself now. I don't want to give you the wrong impression that the teachers we remember are always the sweet and soft ones because sometimes the teachers who leave a lasting impact administer a healthy dose of harshness. I love it, I see you nodding, you know what I mean, they push us, they challenge us, they have high expectations, they change our minds and they change our minds by deepening our knowledge or understanding of a topic, by facilitating our critical thinking or expanding our perspective.

I met a A young man named Jay who is now a science teacher and Jay said: I have to tell you that today I am teaching thanks to my algebra teacher, Mr. man Jay explained mr. The man was his algebra teacher the second time. He had already failed algebra once Jay describes himself as a confident high school kid and a basketball player, but math intimidated him and Jay said: I remember Mr. The exact words of the man in my first day of school, he said, "You'll have a test every day. That test will only cover what we did the day before.

All you have to do is show up, pay attention, and review the material when you get home." Jay said the stakes were high for me, so I did exactly what he said and his days turned into weeks. I started mastering algebra halfway through the semester. I was helping other students and Jay said that at the end of that class I didn't just pass. algebra I got the highest grade and then he said something really important about the impact of teachers. He said that now when I encounter a challenge like algebra or anything else, I realize that it is doable if I take it one day at a time.

Jay illustrated the way we took it. A lesson from a memorable teacher and we learned to apply it to other areas of our lives, but perhaps the most dramatic and moving stories in my collection are the stories and ways in which teachers have impacted the life paths of their students. creating opportunities opening possibilities and increasing our confidence Maria is a great example when I met her on a college campus. She looks so young that she could barely believe that she was in her second year. She had braided hair and a baseball cap and she said. I'm here because of mr.

Diaz, my high school science teacher, Maria, explained to me that she grew up in an immigrant family, a family that moved three or four times a year, she said that every time my family moved, I fell behind. in some classes and in others, some credits did not transfer. I needed a scholarship a scholarship was my only hope and I was losing hope and then I met mr. Díaz saw some potential in me and came to my house after school to talk to my mom and dad. She explained to me that she had a good chance if she could stay and finish classes at my high school.

She convinced my mom and dad to let me live with my uncles and he took me home from the mother club. He even helped me complete my essays and college applications, he said. Now I'm one of five girls in my engineering class and I know I have to work very hard. but I'm motivated because I have a dream and Maria said my dream is to start a foundation to help other immigrant girls go to college. This is the never-ending impact of a teacher because when a teacher helps a student, one can continue to help. many others are these endless karmic waves that create the impact of t-shirt John's Story J's Story Mary's Story are part of a growing collection called Chalk Projects and Chances Chuck and Chances is an online community that celebrates and elevates memorable teachers, all of these The stories there are inherently beautiful and valuable, but they also contain lessons because if we know what has a lasting impact, we can do more, we can become memorable and impactful by design.

I like to imagine a world where every child has a teacher with the power to change hearts, minds and lives, but that dream is tenuous right now because we were in the midst of a critical teacher shortage in my Central Florida district alone, We started the school year with one hundred and eleven teacher vacancies, which is thousands of kids in my district alone. that they did not have the benefit of the impact of a trained teacher and that is not only true in my district, that is a national trend now, some teacher vacancies are due to retirements or population growth, but an increasing number are because teachers decide to leave the profession and It's not just about salaries, it's about having the resources and autonomy to do their job, it's about having the freedom to make an impact, because when teachers are forced to focus strictly on academic achievement and even more narrowly on students' achievement test results, their ability to make decisions the impact is limited when teachers are forced and pressured to improve their test scores, above Everything, they lose what is most satisfying about their work that we can do something about it we can advocate for policies that allow teachers to make decisions in their own classrooms we can advocate for policies that empower teachers to respond to the needs they see in their students.

There is something else we can do about it. We can express our gratitude to the teachers who made an impact on our lives because moments like the one I had with Ali at the Grocery stores are the lifeblood of teachers, they are what keep us going. Was there a teacher who changed your heart, who made you love yourself a little more or maybe changed your mind, made you think about something different or change your life that you want a completely new life? way please reach out and thank that teacher if you can it means everything the teachers I remember have always hired that there are legacies that live on through me the teachers we remember are still alive because the impact they had on us now inspires the impact we have In others maybe that's itThe best way to thank them is to be aware of our own impact.

Have you thought about the impact you make on the people you meet? What do you want them to remember about you when you appear? You fully love and accept people as they are. They are and at the same time you see their potential, you help them become the best versions of themselves, that's what the teachers we remember did for us and maybe when you least expect it, like when you're digging through the avocados in the supermarket, you might just get sweet validation of your own impact