I asked him if he could think of a particular example of their impact, and he said something as simple as teaching the kids to play the bells. It made me start to think about what activities I remembered most from my childhood, and what exactly made them so special to me while not necessarily so special to other kids. It goes back to that saying: "People will not remember what you did as much as they will remember how you made them feel." The activity that left the biggest impact on me as a child was the Oral Language Festival where we had to memorize a story for kids and act it out with gestures. I tried to coach some fifth graders for the same festival when I became a teacher, and they did not seem to feel as inspired as I had felt. I realized what made it special to me was that my coach for the festival was a close family friend who viewed me as talented and expressive and herself as very competent to bring me to my full potential. There was not the same level of awareness about how special the Oral Language Festival was at the school where I worked, and it is impossible to compare the relationship I had with my coach with the relationship I had with my students. I also remember playing recorders with the second grade choir, but it did not leave the same impact on me that playing the bells seemed to leave on the Haitian interpreter. It might be that I remember the teacher being tired out and strict, the class size was enormous or I was just not as musically inclined at the time.
When I asked the American doctors which doctors they felt made the biggest impact on their lives, I was not expecting a very inspiring response. I cannot recall ever feeling half as inspired by one of my doctors as I have by my teachers.
