Saying thanks to our teachers

Centre Daily Times

Think back and try to recall who, during your formative years, had the biggest influence on your development and who most helped shape you into the person you would eventually become.

Your parents, of course, and perhaps a grandmother or grandfather who lived nearby. But outside the home, outside the family, the most important person in your life was almost certainly a teacher.

Each one of us still in life’s pre-Alzheimer’s stage — and even those of us for whom short-term memory is no longer readily accessible — can recall a favorite teacher from our childhood.

They encouraged us, they fostered our love for reading, they praised our successes, however humble, and planted seeds that took years, perhaps decades, to sprout. When they blossomed, however, they did so gloriously — but long out of sight of the sower.

This, as a guest columnist noted Tuesday, is a week set aside to honor and recognize the lasting contributions educators make in the lives of their students. This is National Teacher Appreciation Week.

How fitting that Marion-Walker Elementary School on Wednesday dedicated an outdoor classroom to retired faculty and staff members, complete with a stone marker and individually inscribed bricks.

Retired kindergarten teacher Jean Schott recalled Marion-Walker as a small, “very family oriented” school. It was equally appropriate, then, that the school’s Parent Teacher Organization contributed $6,000 to the project, which includes six benches, a stack of books and a stump made from white marble.

Harry Hanchar, whose two children went to Marion-Walker years ago, carved the benches and decorative artwork; Matt Bitner, another Marion-Walker parent, tapped into his landscaping skills to design the classroom.

And students — today and for years to come — will enjoy their work and be stimulated by the creative environment it fosters.

And if they look carefully, they’ll see the names of those who influenced their older brothers and sisters — their parents and perhaps even their grandparents — on school days long past, but whose influence is still felt. We are asked to say thank you to a teacher this week.

The Marion-Walker Elementary School community in the Bellefonte Area School District did — and it did in a way that will continue to say thank you for years and years and years.

And isn’t that also appropriate?