This weekend is my dad’s 70th birthday and I wanted to do something special to celebrate him. He’s a horrible person to buy a gift for, he is adamant he wants nothing and gets mad if you spend any money on him. After some hard thinking, I came up with something that would both fit his “no money spent” provision but still honor his big day.
My dad has been a high school science teacher since 1972, teaching entirely in small farming communities. And for my entire life, whenever anyone has found out that I’m his daughter the response has always been “He was the best teacher I ever had!”.
So, I put out a public Facebook post asking for people to send cards, emails, notes, or comments about him. I was terrified nobody would respond, that this would all fail spectacularly and I would be left with nothing. The post was shared over ninety times and had more than twenty comments within 48 hours. Over the next three weeks, I got over 20 cards in my mailbox and 11 emails in my inbox, and I expect to get some more this week.
Now, that might not sound like a lot, but considering the size of the schools he taught at and the fact that I’m not Facebook friends with most of these people, I consider that a pretty good return rate. But the more important thing, and what inspired this blog post, is what those emails contained. (I haven’t opened the cards, obviously.)
So many people wrote it about how they had never liked science before they took his classes. They had been poor students who hadn’t connected. And now they were studying chemistry in college or working in a science related field. Others are now teachers who were inspired to enter that field because of him. Or just people who remember the chemistry and physics they were taught thirty years after they took his class.
My dad never set out to change the world and I doubt he would ever say that he had made a difference at all. That’s just the kind of person he is. But what these emails and notes prove is the opposite. Now, nobody will ever make a movie of his life starring Michelle Pfeifer or Edward James Olmos. But there are several generations of students who will remember him long after he’s gone. And what more could any of us ask for our lives?
The takeaway from all of this is that you don’t have to cure cancer or run into a burning building to be a hero. You don’t have to make grand gestures or be on the front page of a national newspaper to make a difference. You just have to be passionate about something and share that passion with others. You have to meet people at their level and challenge them to be better. And we all have that capacity within us.
Happy birthday, Dad! I hope 70 treats you well!
