Teachers. When most people hear this they will automatically think back to either their favorite or least favorite grade school teacher. But teachers are not just people who have expensive degrees and get paid next to nothing to stand in front of a room full of young people who don't care about what is said. A teacher is someone who instructs someone else in some way, shape or manner. Teachers are people who help you understand something you didn't understand before. Teachers are people who read stories to children or young people.
Teachers sometimes don't even know they're teaching. That's right. When you yell and scream a driver who cuts you off, you just taught your 8 year old in the backseat that it's okay to do that. When you cheat on your taxes, you just taught your 16 year old that stealing is okay.
I had an argument with someone very dear to me the other day about teachers. This person said they would laugh if I one day ended up a teacher. I had the typical response and thought of teaching in a public school setting. This person was thinking more along the lines of teaching in a church or small group setting. We argued for quite a while about it and ended up dropping the subject awkwardly and trying to make the conversation limp along after that. It's a shame we weren't both thinking of the same definition of "teacher."
See, the truth is that we're all teachers, whether we realize it or not. Whether we teach people good things or bad things is up to us. We have to choose to consciously teach the people around us all the good things we have learned from other teachers.
