“Human life is a person’s struggle with order, or with God —the name does not matter. It is impossible to conform to order, but order is necessary to live, and the struggle with it shapes one’s life.”

— Vaclav Havel

Havel foresees the day when the world will have evolved so far that no one cares anymore whether a person who claims to believe something is serious or not. If he were serious, he would probably even be considered a lunatic and a fool.

Perhaps we are living in those days. I want to think that there is still room for education. The Opinion Exchange of the Star Tribune points out school is out for the summer, “but the debate over the future of education has no season” so they “took time to ponder a simple question: ‘What makes a teacher stand out?’”

I can’t speak that well for my education. One of my best teachers was my sister. She would babysit me when my mother worked nights at the Terp. I remember putting letters together hoping to produce a word. I don’t think it was something we did often but it was my introduction to early education.

My advanced “study time” during my early days consisted of time spent with Jack the dog sitting on the bank of Turtle Creek fishing for chubs and shiners and watching the river flow.

Perhaps the fact that my mother was a country school teacher who secretly eloped with my father while she was teaching country school and had to keep it a secret or she would have had to resign.

My sister started out as a teacher for a while and my brother too became a teacher. He stayed with it until retirement and now transports school teams from time to time.

The Opinion Exchange of last Sunday’s Tribe asks: “What makes a teacher stand out?” They say, “the query isn’t always obvious” and “It isn’t even always found in a school.” They site six teachers for example. One was not a “teacher” who taught a young boy early in the morning how to water-ski when he was not catching on, while the others slept.

Another was an example of a math teacher who was unable to command a classroom. I faced a similar experience my first year of teaching following my sister’s steps.

I remember the first day with my sixth graders at Banfield going over the rules and being quite playful about it. There was a good supply of laughter in the room. Somehow I seemed to miss the component on structure. No one had told me that they relied on structure even though my student teacher in Albert Lea was a good example.

After a few months passed I decided I wasn’t capable of being Edith Morey, the teacher that “turned on the light” for all of us and in such a hands on way. I could never say enough about Miss Morey. She was the teacher that stood out and sometimes said: “I can’t hear a pin drop!”

One of the editorial writings is about a Mrs. Halvorson and Mrs. Regan where a former student tells,  “They got me to love learning, which led me to study political science, and maybe one of the main reasons I feel so blessed to have a journalism job.”

I learned there was more to becoming a teacher than just having one. I continued to teach here and there, mostly as a substitute and then frequently in Lyle when I moved back to Minnesota. Along the way I ran into teachers that stood out along with some wonderful students.

Now with the reduction in the money flow it will make education more difficult. Classrooms will grow larger and the question remains: what is education really about. I had one bad teacher in school. If I add on high school, there was another. College was lacking at Mankato State while education at Winona State and UCR in Riverside shined.

Another article tells us “females are increasingly more educated, better educated and better credentialed than their male counterparts.”

Now I’m interested in writing, influenced by the late Carol Bly who wrote “Changing the Bully Who Rules the World,” and “Beyond the Writer’s Workshop” and “Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bone and Old Friend from Far Away” — the practice of writing memoir.

Schools need to pay more spontaneous attention to writing and not spend all their time answering text questions and allow students to work together.