The Teacher Who Taught Me How To Dream         

I don’t know about you, but I do know about me.  I love to read.  I love to read real and true stories about men and women of great accomplishment and tenacity who overcome great and most difficult obstacles as they are achieving their own success.  No one regardless of their sex, education level, talent, or abilities ever achieves great and lasting success all by themselves—all alone doing all that is required without any help from anyone else.  

One is too small of a number with which to succeed.

Real significant success is always a team effort even if you feel all alone while you are in the process of achieving your chosen level of success.

No man or woman is born full well knowing what and how to achieve their own real success in life.  Accomplishing your own success is a learned skill set.  It demands a student-teacher relationship of sorts.  You see, you don’t know that which you do not know.  And in order to know what you need to do in order to achieve your success, and how to perform such required work efforts, a person must develop a mentor relationship with another person who knows what and how to do the required work efforts needed to accomplish the identified and highly desired levels of success.  

The two most significant requirements of a mentor are: (1) They have already accomplished that which you desire to achieve, and (2) they are willing to invest their time and resources in you, the student, and teach you what you need to do for yourself, thereby enabling you to achieve your own personal desired levels of success.

Having or being a mentor is not a personality contest.  Your mentor, if he or she is going to be good at assisting you in your march towards achieving personal success, most probably will not always be in total agreement with you on every subject.  If fact, a really good mentor will quite often aggravate and irritate you, the student, particularly when you refuse or fail to follow the instructions and guidance you have been given by your mentor.  It is always a good idea to keep in mind why you have selected the person who becomes your personal mentor and what it is that you really need from them; as well as what you agreed to do as relates to following what they tell you to do.

If you, for any reason, fail to obey or follow the guidance you are given by your mentor, remember that they can cancel their part of the bargain at any time.  You are not offering them anything, it is they who are offering you the benefit of their knowledge and experience.

Good mentors will never allow their student to waste or second guess their proven instructions and resources which they have given to their students.

The greatest gift you, the student, can ever give back to your mentor is to follow their guidance all the way through to completion and achieve the very success you desired at the beginning of your new relationship.

Success is truly a planned event.  It is not an accident and it is not something that is only for a few lucky folks.  Anyone can succeed, but you must do all of the required work before you can even hope to accomplish your personal desires.

No individual person can ever come to know what needs to be done to accomplish real success unless and until someone else is willing to teach them.  It is for this very reason that teaching is the single most important profession among human beings.  Students are best taught by observing their teacher doing what it is that they themselves should be doing to build their success; of observing what the instructor desires for them to learn.  

I read a short story today that hits the nail on the head as relates to a teacher actually teaching her students precisely what and how to do what needs to be done in order for her students to achieve their own real success.

Permit me to tell you that I truly believe that all you readers and listeners who honestly desire to create a great and knowledgeable organization of many subordinate leaders in any chosen endeavor would do yourself very well to learn what this great teacher did to aid her students in becoming sophisticated learners and duplicators of what the right things in life are and how she taught her students how to properly use such gained knowledge and information. 

The story is told by Linda Diane Marshall.  I desire to share it with you in hopes that it will bless your life in the same way as it blessed mine.

A story please……….

“Children, please repeat after me, ‘I am only one, but I am one.  I can’t do everything, but I can do something.  What I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do!’

That was my exact introduction to my eighth-grade homeroom teacher—the one special person who did most to make my faith grow.  She was to be my homeroom teacher for the next three years and my English teacher for the eighth and eleventh grades.

Mrs. Carolyn Long was the smallest person in the room, but she dominated every square foot of it.  She smiled and we all were glad we had chosen that school.  She walked, talked, and even seemed to eat too fast.  She seemed to feel that time would run out before she taught us anything and that if it did the fault would be hers.

Yet there was no lack of patience with us.  Instead she made each of us feel that we were special people without bestowing special favor upon anyone.  She always found time to give to each of us “their five minutes” as she called it.  None was neglected.  

I first came to Mrs. Long thoroughly convinced that I was never meant to be anybody of importance and that the odds were very great that I would never be a person of any great accomplishment.  I had long ago decided that no one cared and nothing really mattered, so I just existed from day to day without having any thought of tomorrow or what it might bring into my life.  The distant future (3 to 5 years distant) was simply beyond my personal conception.  Drab and unhappy circumstances had stunted my growth, killed my faith, and left me floating on a directionless sea of time.

My home, I felt, was merely a place to go when school closed.  I thought it a prison.  My mother provided food and shelter for my body but really had little time for me.  Separated from my father, she had full responsibility for my nine brothers and sisters.  There were just too many other things which took all of her time.  I never got my “five minutes” with her as I did with Mrs. Long.  We just never talked about the things that I had on my mind.

I felt life was hopeless—and it was—until I met Mrs. Long who kept nudging me with her remarks like, “Use your mind, Linda, and free your body.”  “You can break out of the prison of your own environment if you study hard and do all of your lessons every day.”  Or she would say, “You can really be somebody if you want to be.”

The Lord knows that I really wanted to be somebody.

She continued to admonish us daily with that devotional chant, “You are only one, but you are one”…meaning that we ought to be very proud of ourselves and if we weren’t, we ought to have guts enough to do something about it.  I tried not to listen, but I heard her.  I tried to ignore what she meant, but I got the message, loud and clear.  I told myself she was a fake, a too-good-to-be-true pretender, but she always sounded so sincere.  When I was on the verge of becoming a convert, I angrily denounced her for fussing all the time.

Then one day she asked us to look out of the window and then to write about whatever came into our minds as we looked.  It was a dark wintry day.  I wrote a little poem about whispering leaves and the snow-kissed earth.  She was ecstatic about it.  One would have thought she had discovered another Shakespeare.  I had never dared to show anyone my poetry before lest I be ridiculed or made to feel ashamed.  Here enthusiastic praise melted my sorrow and broke the dam of my resolution.  I wrote all of my themes in poetry that year.

She wouldn’t accept “dirty” incorrect work.  We had to write it over until it was pretty and clean and errorless.  Then basking in the glory of her smile, we would pin it on the bulletin board.  “See!  Everyone can create beauty,” she’d say, pointing to all of our themes, which I must admit did look beautiful.  Sloppy work, she swore would always develop sloppy characters in us and that would always blight our futures.  Heaven forbid!

I could go on forever enumerating how this little energetic, enthusiastic lady rekindled my faith in myself and my ability to fight against the odds; how she inspired me to a greater faith in God; how she helped me to believe in the innate goodness of my fellowman.

Slowly, I believed,…and slowly,…believing changed me.  I joined the Student Council.  I accepted an invitation to appear in an assembly program.  She helped me, encouraged me, and was waiting to praise me when it was over; but sweeter than that, was the thundering applause of my schoolmates who proved that she was right.

My sprouting wings continued to grow to full strength through my high school years.  It was not always easy, but Mrs. Long was my radar, able to detect my wavering convictions, always encouraging, urging, and pointing the way. 

“That’s good, Linda, but you can do better,” she would say and I would do better.  If I stumbled, she’d say, “You can stop now, Linda,”and I would try again.  

With her help I have achieved confidence in my ability to face the future.  I now understand myself and my future potential.  I also understand the circumstances about my home.

My determination to find a way led me into business education and trade.  My dogged “do it well, if at all” training has gotten me a part-time job in one of the school offices and the confidence of my superiors.  I dare to dream of getting a college degree, and I now have the faith to believe that somehow, some way, I shall achieve it.  After all, I am only one, but I am one.  I can’t do everything, but I can do something.  What I can do, I ought to do; and what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do!

My most fervent prayer is that someday Mrs. Long will have cause to be really proud of me and that I shall be able to wrap the mantle of her faith around another child like myself.”

The basis of all success starts with having a dream that arrests your attention and is so big, and is so clear, and is so important to you that you simply have to have it; that you cannot live without it, and that it causes you to immediately begin to move and start building your own personal success.  

Just remember that all things are possible to him who believes.

Peace and Love to All of You……………………..Poppa Bear