30 Days of Gratitude Challenge - Day 17

[Granny_Weatherwax]

Start the day off with a smile! Drink a cup of your favorite morning beverage (or evening beverage if you're in a different time zone).

Today we are thinking about and showing gratitude for our education or opportunities to educate others.
Is there a teacher in your life who made an impression on you? Was there a course you took that resonated with your core being? Were you able to help others learn something new? How has education (in any of its forms) changed you?

Action steps: Write to a teacher or professor and tell them how much their teaching meant to you. Donate to a scholarship fund. Reach out to a past student and see how they are doing. Try to find an old high school or college friend and share a favorite memory.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Granny_Weatherwax

[Granny_Weatherwax]

I was a first gen college student from both sides of the family. My mom did graduate from high school but my father dropped out after the 8th grade. My father was possibly one of the most intelligent people I knew but, due to dramatic and unfortunate life circumstances, was unable to realize his potential. I went to a wonderful woman's college and that is where I really began to understand how wondrous, complicated, and diverse people and the world really were. I was able to conduct research beginning my freshman year and remained on campus during my first two summers to work in the lab. Heavenly experiences.

 I am grateful for the time spent at that college. So grateful to the admissions office who took a chance on me, the scholarship and financial aid offices which made it possible to attend a school with a yearly tuition higher than two years of my family's income. A high school teacher who encouraged me to apply. 
 

I think I'll post on my college graduation year FB page. I'm not yet certain what I'll write but I will write something. I become emotional (and can easily fall into regretful depression) when I think about what could have been.  I will remain grateful, however, and rejoice in the memories of the quaint New England town, Pearsons, Prospect, and the Mandells. And Mountain Day. And M&Cs. And my first real New England autumn and the splendor of the trees and apple cider donuts. Of family style meals served in the dorm dining room. Of playing tennis with professors during the summer. Of sitting in awe of the grand library. Of carving my name into a study carrel to prove to my future self that I was indeed there.

[SKL]

Respect and gratitude for education - one of the few thing we can expect most boardies to agree on.  😛

My family educational background is a bit like yours.  My dad is dyslexic and couldn't read a whole sentence until he was 30.  He was tested in 7th grade and tested out 2nd grade for reading but college plus for science.  They let him drop out of school at 15 to pursue his own radio repair business.  My mom was academically great, but she dropped out on her 16th birthday because her family culture / religion didn't value a high school diploma.  While I was growing up, my folks were earning their GEDs, associates' degrees, and technical licenses, and encouraging their kids to follow a college-bound track.  Of their 6 kids, I was the first to earn a bachelor's, but all of us eventually got educated one way or another.

We lived in a city with a deteriorating public school system, so when we were young, our folks made parochial school happen somehow, until we moved out of the city.  But there was no money for higher education.  Thankfully my mom made it her business to know about student loans and made sure we applied and did all the things necessary to get to college.  As for me, my mom always used to think I should be a lawyer, so she encouraged me to apply to law school as I was completing my BGS.  I don't know how things would have gone had I not had this kind of family culture growing up.

Not intentionally, but I've followed a similar path with my kids - parochial school through 8th, followed by public high school.  It's a reasonably decent education for them, providing plenty of options if they don't lose their heads.  At 14 they recently started to take more ownership and interest in what all this education is for.  They are decent students, but not without significant challenge at times.  Still, I think they value education, which is really the goal at this point.

Growing up, I aspired to be a teacher / reading specialist for kids with learning disabilities.  So a love of learning/teaching has always been a big part of who I am.  I ended up following a different path career-wise, but I always did volunteer work with literacy, until I had my own kids with their own learning challenges.

I am grateful for so many things, I'm going to bullet some of them....

• For parents who valued education and cared enough to model it and to encourage us throughout our childhood / young adulthood. 
• For intelligent and healthy genes.  Mine and my kids'.
• For living in a country/time where there are so many realistic options for people who weren't born with their bed made. 
• For growing up during relatively peaceful times when I could focus on self-development. 
• For every teacher who encourages a child to reach his/her potential. 
• For communities that value both education and individuality. 
• For the ability to financially afford appropriate educational options for my kids.
• For the ability to teach/tutor my kids when that's helpful.
• For the school of life, living in a rich world full of valuable experiences and individuals.

As far as actions, I have several scholarship students in one developing country, and I support several schools for disadvantaged / handicapped kids in another developing country.  I contribute to a scholarship fund at my kids' former school, and to a school associated with a big mental health organization in my county.  I have set aside / given cash to support my nieces/nephews' educations.  I've done a fair amount of volunteer work with students over the years.  Each year I try to do a little more than the prior year.  While I haven't done much with others' kids during Covid, I will look for ways to get back to doing that before too much time passes.

Edited November 17, 2021 by SKL

[DreamerGirl]

I am incredibly grateful for the education I was privileged to receive. It altered the trajectory of my life.

I come from a world where gender, family, money could stop someone from being educated at any age. Even wealth was not a guarantee of education.

I have many firsts in my family, something I do not take lightly and I am immensely grateful for as I am standing on the shoulders of so many incredible women of generations past. They did not have the kind of opportunity or even the option I had of being educated. 

I am also immensely grateful for my teachers who spent hours invested in me, libraries, my family. 

Of all the blessings I have been giving, perhaps the most important of all is my education and I do not take for granted. I am very passionate about education in general and particularly about female education especially because of how life changing it was for me. 

I give back in many ways because I was the recipient of so much that helped me in many ways by multiple kind people.

My favorite is teaching adults to read and write. There is something profound about seeing a person's eyes light up when they write their own name when they are adults and have gone through life without knowing that which most of us take for granted.

Education changes life. More than anything else. It is my fundamental belief. 

I am thus grateful for all the people that made my life possible because of my education.

[Granny_Weatherwax]

Bump

[mom31257]

My mom grew up in a family that valued education, though both her parents only had high school diplomas. She went to college for 2 years and got an associate's degree. She had cousins with PhDs.

My dad grew up in a poor, farming family that was poorly educated. He did graduate high school but had dreams of attending the University of Georgia and studying agriculture. Education wasn't important to them, though. My dad was a great athlete and set state records in track. A coach came to my grandfather and told him he could train my dad and get him a scholarship. My grandfather never told my dad until years later. So he promised us that if any of us wanted to go to college, he would make it happen. And he did.   

I went to Lee University in TN, and I was the first in his family to receive a bachelor's degree. My dad wanted my his mother to come to my graduation, but she wouldn't come because she had other plans. Needless to say, we weren't very close with that side of the family. 

I'm very thankful for my elementary (K-8) and high school education. I had wonderful teachers who made me feel special and challenged me. I remember loving SRA cards because I could go through them as fast as I wanted. I'll never forget crying as my 5th grade teacher read, Where the Red Fern Grows, aloud in class. I remember loving my science classes, too.  My favorite teacher of all is my Algebra 1 and Physics teacher. She recognized my love of math and put me on the school's math team, and I thrived in competitions. For the small TN town that I lived in, the education was very good. My senior English teacher had a Ph. D. I was able to take advanced courses in math, biology, and chemistry. I made a perfect score on the math and nearly perfect on the science of the ACT during my Junior year with really no prep. I credit it to the great education I received. 

College was a great experience, and I'm so thankful for the wonderful professors I had, amazing chapel services I attended, and the loving friends I found. I started as a biology major, but my math professor talked me into switching majors. When I wasn't sure what direction to go, he gave me good advice. He died from Covid last year, but I did see him when our dd started there a few years ago. Dh attended there, and we were able to figure out the day we met. We didn't date while we attended but started dating later. So I'm thankful my education there helped me find him. He is a high school history teacher and has a master's degree in international relations, so education matters to him, too. Our ds is a freshman at Lee this year. Our dd graduated from there in 2019 and is a nurse. 

I'm very thankful for the opportunities I have had to educate others. After I had my daughter, I started teaching in a hybrid school for a  few years. Then we began homeschooling. I taught in co-ops, hosted book clubs, and taught private students. I loved teaching children at church, too. I spent a summer going through IEW's Teaching Writing with Structure and Style and Teaching the Classics, and they turned me in a language arts lover. Some of my favorite memories over the last 20 years have been while educating kids. I started and directed a co-op that I hated to leave when we moved. We began ten years ago with about 10 families and 20 students. When I left this past year, there were 36 families and 85 students. There was always a waiting list. 

I currently use Zoom to teach a dozen students, who all live where we moved from this summer. I love helping them learn! 

Now that my dd is a nurse and dealt with so many people from different walks of life, she told me how much she appreciates growing up in our family and the value we place on education as well as our academic abilities. 

I will try to find my Algebra 1 teacher and see if I can tell her how much I appreciate her. I was able to see her several years ago, but it would be nice to again. 

Edited November 18, 2021 by mom31257

[Hannah]

Both my parents were immigrant children from Europe after WWII and achieved their high school diplomas, but there was no money to got to tertiary institutions.  They studied for certificates where they could through their employers and were self-taught in so many fields, from building a house together, literally brick by brick themselves, to playing musical instruments, doing art, and their own taxes.

I was extremely fortunate to receive study bursaries for university education.  The system here is that a company sponsors your tertiary education and you then have an obligation to work for them for a period, usually year for year.  The company does this to recruit talented students for scarce skills, in my case in the STEM field, and for the student it means they have employment after they complete their education.  My husband was on the same scheme and we met through work.  It was never our intention to stay for as long as we have, but we have both been with the company now for more than 25 years and probably will be until we retire.

We give back by sponsoring others.  I've been meaning to reach out to an old school friend and will do so today.