Encouragement and Enthusiasm
Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs.
Mark 10:14
When I think back on my own life, I know how much I owe to my teachers. There were my first teachers, my parents, Kayell and Brian. There was my Year 1 teacher, Miss Taylor, who managed to get me to stay at school, despite my determination to run back home, as I cried through every day of that first week. There were my brilliant primary school teachers like Mr Morris, Mr Maddern and Mr Wilson. And there were the standout teachers of my high school years – my PE teacher, Miss Hull, English teachers, like Mr Barton and Mr Clarke, my Art teacher, Mr Paans. I have also been fortunate to have taught with some outstanding teachers at schools throughout Queensland.
These people all shared two specific qualities – what we might call the 2 Es. Firstly, there was great enthusiasm for their subject, and secondly there was the capacity to encourage their students in every way possible.
In recognising all our teachers here today, let us remember the words of writer Pearl Buck:
Only the brave should teach. The men and women whose integrity cannot be shaken, whose minds are enlightened enough to understand the high calling of the teacher, whose hearts are unshakeably loyal to the young, whatever the interests of those who are in power.
There is no hope for our world unless we can educate a different kind of man and woman. I put the teacher higher than any other person today in world society, in responsibility and in opportunity. Only those who love the young should teach. Teaching is not a way to make a livelihood; the livelihood is incidental. Teaching is a vocation. It is as sacred as priesthood, as innate as a desire, as inseparable as the genius which compels a great artist.
If a teacher has not the concern of humanity, the love for living creatures, the vision of the priest and of the artist, that person must not teach. Teachers who hate to teach can only have pupils who hate to learn. Great and true teachers think of a child, dream of the child, see visions not of themselves but in the flowering of the child into adulthood. They think of the child first and always not of themselves.
It takes courage to be a teacher and it takes unalterable love for the child; only the brave should teach.
There is a marvellous line in Robert Bolt’s play, 'A Man for All Seasons' when Thomas More asks Richard Rich, “why not be a teacher – you’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one?” Rich replies, “And if I was, who would know it?” to which More responds, “You, your pupils, your friends, God – not a bad public that”.
I commend to you the teachers of Somerville House, via this short clip.
Mrs Kim Kiepe
Principal
Acknowledgment:
C Gleeson SH, School Assembly, celebrating World Teachers’ Day – 9 November 2001.