On Teachers
Many of my favorite humans have been teachers. When I look back on my life, pre-Watchfire Music, the people pinnacles were often the teachers, on one level or another, who came through my life and left some precious knowledge or life-lessons behind.
They weren’t always the easiest experiences in life, but were certainly the most rewarding. Some of these include the obvious and some are a bit surprising now that I think on it.
The obvious ones were my schoolteachers – Jack Eyerly who took me under his wing in high school and college and believed in me as a musical entity. As a hugely successful track coach, he also taught me how to run with proper and efficient form – something that I’m still conscious of every time I move from a walk to a trot in life.
A woman named Irma Erickson who taught me the joys of creative writing also was tough as nails and demanded the best. A genius teacher named Sanford Meisner taught me what it meant to be an artist and how to dig down into my own being and understand how I tick as a creative person. I use his teachings every day.
A famous playwright named Neil Simon taught me the elements of comedy and the power of 3 in drama. A gentle man named John Morris was my first teacher in the art of orchestration back in the days when I didn’t know which side of the note to put the stem on.
Another gentle giant named Jeremy Harris taught me the art of recording engineering as I sat next to him for 22 years as he recorded and mixed my music. A woman named Jenny Burton taught me about committing fully to the moment in performance and how that commitment was everything in the creation of any artistic endeavor.
A director named AJ Antoon taught me about the importance of every tiny detail in my artistic work. I’ll always remember the day that he stopped the dress rehearsal in the library scene and ran up on stage and rearranged 3 of the hundreds of books behind the actors on the library shelves because the red one was upstaging the scene. At the time everyone thought he was crazy, but he was right.
My parents, Lyman and Dolly, simply taught me how to live and be a good person and the huge importance of that effort in my life. My brother, Jim, taught me how to grow up by his own example. By beating me up regularly when we were kids, he taught me how to be tough and how to fight back when necessary.
A coach named Art Schultz taught me how to tackle so hard that I would never get hurt when I misunderstood the whole concept. Today because of that football lesson I’m still great at tackling just about anything that comes my way.
My wife, Julia, taught me how to love people. She’s really good at it and that’s why God put us together at a time when I was starting to give up on people. Now I still learn from her every day.
My son, Dustin, taught me how to be a father – probably the hardest lessons of my life. I’m still learning from him and it’s still often harder than I wish it would be, but I’m still learning.
A man I never met named Jesus taught me the potential of humankind and yes, my own potential. I’ve still got a lot to learn from him. And a whole raft of people from Lao-Tzu to Eckhart Tolle to Mary Baker Eddy to Buddha to Baba Ram Das taught me who I really am beyond the mortal seeming form.
Last night I watched The Freedom Writers movie. Hilary Swank stars in this story about a teacher in a racially divided school who gives her students what they’ve always needed – a voice. Swank plays Erin Gruwell the real-life teacher at Long Beach’s Wilson High who inspired her students to overcome the gangs that divided them and the education system that forgot them. Based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary Hilary is supported by a wondrous cast of first-time actors who drew from their actual experiences on the street.
The movie just bowled me over once again and I spent 2 hours mopping up my cheeks as she taught these great kids lesson after lesson. I went to bed eternally grateful for all my life teachers. Listed above are only a few.
Listed below are some of my favorite movies about teachers and teaching. I couldn’t rank them because they are all full of important life lessons just as I couldn’t rank my own personal favorite teachers.
And now, it seems, in life more and more I get to be the teacher and someone else the student. It’s become a passion – to pass on the ideas and examples of all my great exemplars. In this endeavor I try to be lovingly hard as nails and demand much. Patience is perhaps not my forte, but I’m learning even that – from my students.
As a Sunday School teacher for 25 years I’ve always said that I learn more than the students just by the simple act of teaching. Perhaps that’s why some of my great teachers were impelled to teach me. They too needed to continue to grow and to learn through the simple act of imparting what they understood about life.
For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
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Those of us who are on the path of life are either students or teachers. The more we study, the better teachers we become. The more we teach, the better students we become. In either role, it is always a gift when we are privileged by the presence of a great student or teacher in our midst. The gift lies in bringing out the very best in the other person and guiding them to a place of more and more seeking and a self-perpetuating desire to seek and find the light.