This is a bit of a long walk, but stick with me. I promise I have a point to make about teaching.

My wife and I just got home from a funeral for a friend of ours. A wonderful woman who lives – I use the present tense because her spirit is still very much alive in our little town – down the street from us. The service was lovely, and she was affectionately eulogized by her husband and her sister, with many warm memories offered by others who chose to share.

In our friend’s final days, she was cared for at a respite house, with dedicated hospice nurses at her side to meet any needs she had. My wife has worked as a hospice volunteer with our local home health agency for a couple years now. The work hospice volunteers and nurses are charged with is work I could not do. 

The distance between hospice and teaching 3rd grade is vast. 

Or is it?

On the back of our friend’s funeral program was a prayer. The Nurse’s Prayer. Now, as it turns out, there are a lot of The Nurse’s Prayers out in the world. I’m far from a scholar when it comes to prayer, and Google was no help in finding any insight about this particular one. But here it is:

The Nurse’s Prayer
Dear Lord, guide me in my chosen profession,
And help me to be a skilled and compassionate caregiver.
As I minister to the sick … looking out for their well-being,
Let me tend to both their physical and emotional needs.
Help me to remember that my demeanor
Is at least as important as the medicines that I distribute.
When I enter a room, allow me to project an image of confidence and warmth,
So that my patients will feel at ease with me and trust in my judgement.
No matter how many times I see fear in their eyes or recognize that they are in pain …
Remind me that I should never become callous to their needs.
Gift me with strength, Dear Lord, every day …
So that I will have the capacity to give 100 percent of myself
To all of those who depend upon me for care.
And at the end of every day, I humbly ask you, Lord,
To grant me a few quiet moments so that I may reflect upon the work that I have done
And prepare myself for the challenges that tomorrow will surely bring.

As I read this piece, I was struck by the words and phrases it contained. Medical tropes aside, it sounded an awful lot like someone seeking the qualities it takes to be a teacher.

Help me to be a skilled and compassionate (teacher).

Yeah. Effective, meaningful teaching takes skill and compassion. Walk to the front of a classroom without skill (or at least the intent to become skillful) and compassion, and you’re going to have a bad time.

… Looking out for (students’) well-being as we meet their physical and emotional needs.

It’s a complaint often made by educators that we are teachers, not counselors. And this is true. But what is also true is that the state of modern education (and this country) is such that we need to be mindful of students’ emotional needs. I’m a firm believer that Social Emotional Learning integrated across subjects and curricula is one of the most effective options we have for rebuilding what was lost during the pandemic. Effectively implemented, the approach can take us to an even better place than where we were in March 2019. 

As for physical needs, we have school nurses. (Thank goodness.) But show me a teacher who doesn’t have band-aids, cough drops, and a tube of vaseline, and I’ll show you a teacher who isn’t quite ready to start their day.

Here’s maybe my favorite bit:

Help me to remember that my demeanor
Is at least as important as the (curriculum I teach).

A saying that I try to keep at the front of my brain every day in the classroom (even though I guarantee I was say it wrong if I try to say it out loud) is “Be the thermostat, not the thermometer.” As a teacher, I need to remember that I am responsible for setting the metaphorical temperature in my classroom. The better I am able to stay at a comfy 70 degrees, the more successful I will be in teaching and meeting my students’ needs. If I let them set the temperature or if my mood and attitude is all over the place, my ability to teach effectively is diminished, and it’s almost a certainty that I’m going to miss something that will help students be successful. 

I could have the best curriculum in the world, but if my demeanor is out of whack, it just won’t matter. If I can’t project an image of confidence and warmth, my students almost certainly won’t feel at ease with me and trust in my judgement.

Remind me that I should never become callous to their needs.

I worry about this one a lot, and it’s so hard to avoid. After all, how many days in a row can one hear about the same playground drama, dole out advice, have conversations with the kiddos involved, and still be authentic? Right?
But they’re kids. They’re figuring this stuff out, and they can’t do it without us. Besides, how often do we repeat our own grown-up versions of playground drama before we figure out what needs to be done?

Finally …

Gift me with strength … every day …
So that I will have the capacity to give 100 percent of myself
To all of those who depend upon me for care.

Yeah. I don’t think anyone’s figured out a way to teach effectively without giving 100% of one’s self. Not just to students, but to the school staff that surround us. We carry each other through our days. It’s one of my very favorite things about being a teacher.

On the other side of this analysis, I guess my point is this. 

When I was sitting at the funeral service today, thinking about my friend, thinking about hospice care, thinking about teaching, I realized something. Across a given lifespan, the needs of a person don’t change much. 

What my friend needed when she was a little girl, sitting in her 1st grade classroom, and what she needed six decades later as her physical time with us began to draw to a close, was pretty much the same stuff.

Skillful care. Compassion. Having her physical and emotional needs met. Thoughtfulness and consideration. Confidence in those caring for her. Someone willing to give 100%.

We grow. We get older. We change. But we don’t really change. And for all our differences, we are essentially the same. Spiritual teacher and psychologist Ram Dass once said of our state as human beings, “We’re all just walking each other home.” I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that more than I have the past couple of hours as these thoughts have washed over me.

Anyway, that’s what this teacher learned today from a friend who’s gone, but not really gone. And I’m grateful for the lesson.