I started out thinking about teachers in a very straightforward way: as the men and women who stand at the front of our classrooms during our formative years, the folks who keep us in line, somehow teach us fractions, often instill good manners and lifelong values, and scrape the spitballs off the walls at the end of very long days. Along with our parents, they are probably the most important influences leading us down the path—sometimes smooth, often rocky—to our adult selves.
But when I began talking to people about the memories they had of their student years, what I found right away was that the word "teacher" encompasses a much wider group of people than I had originally considered, and that classrooms aren't just in the schoolhouse. Of course, for most of us, the majority of our traditional and formal education happens between the years we toddle off to kindergarten and our near-adult time spent in college—the latter years often spent far from home and under the thrall of the new, exciting ideas presented by our professors rather than the well-worn, oft-repeated ideas our mothers and fathers had been desperately trying to imbue in us. But along the way, we meet other people who are teachers of one sort or another, too.
"Oh, but I want to tell you what my football coach said to me," someone told me. "His advice has stayed with me my whole life." Another said, "My first mentor when I entered the workforce taught me a lesson I've never forgotten—though at the time I was mortified." There were faculty advisors, too, and guidance counselors. And, of course, for students of a certain age and religious background, there were The Nuns. Their reputation precedes them, but the care these women—who had no children of their own—often bestowed on their charges demonstrated that everything wasn't, well, just black and white.
So, my initial notion of what a teacher is grew. And my understanding of what kinds of things they taught us became much vaster. Often, when queried, contributors in this book would initially remember a silly or amusing incident or anecdote from their early school years, then they would stop, consider, and relate a story that has stuck with them well into adulthood. The lessons our teachers impart are countless, the care they give, boundless; the dreams they help us realize, infinite; the hours of listening, endless.
And then there is the very obvious thing that I hadn't considered: Sure the students wanted to tell stories about their teachers and share advice they'd gotten from them—from funny to shocking to wise—but it also turned out that the teachers had plenty to say themselves. They wanted to share what they say to their classes and what they think works in a classroom. A lot of teaching is trial and error, but they didn't at all mind telling tales on themselves. In the end, Like My Teacher Always Said … turned out to be a warm, hilarious, sweet—and sometimes unnerving!—collection of life in front of the blackboard, with everyone chiming in. It's said that children are our future, but I'll tell you this: Not without our teachers.
Erin McHugh
NEW YORK CITY, SEPTEMBER 2015
