How My School Teachers Influenced Me - Smarter Every Day 284

Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smart Every Day. I had an opportunity to do an event locally where I got to make a video to thank some of my teachers, and it was awesome.

And when I got done making this video, it's super sweet. Some of my teachers are actually in it. When I got done, I was like, "This is special." I got to actually thank my teachers, some of the people that formed me and made me who I am. I want people to know about them and know the very specific things they did for me in my life. And it was just wonderful.

So, I decided that I don't want to just use this video for this local event. I want everybody to see it because it's awesome to thank your teachers. And if you've never done that, I would highly recommend you consider doing this because it feels so good to me, and it feels good to them because, like, we're products of our teachers.

So this is the video I made, and like I said, as a part of the event, some of my teachers are in it, and they say nice things, which is a little embarrassing to me, but I want you to meet them. I love these people, and I'm so proud of them, and I'm grateful. So if you like this, if you enjoy it, and if it makes you feel like it makes me feel when you get done watching it, consider making one of these for your teachers and telling them the things you've always felt but they've never heard.

Because I think there's power in the spoken word, and I think this could be huge. So I'm going to, I'm going to let you watch it now. Here's the video.

My three siblings and I are the product of our hardworking and loving parents, Darryl and Terry Sandlin. They've spent so much time teaching us so much, but we're also the product of the Morgan County School system. And we've had so many teachers teach us so many wonderful things over the years.

I thought it would be appropriate to take this time to say thank you for some very specific things. And I thought it would be fun if we kind of look back at that. First of all, I want to say thank you to Miss Maria Yung, my kindergarten teacher. You taught me how to listen, and a huge part of learning is listening.

I remember sitting around the rocking chair in the room, and when it was storytime, we had to be quiet. You brought in people that we could listen to. Chris, his grandfather strikes a memory for me. He was on icebreakers in the Arctic. I remember listening to him and thinking, "That was amazing." When the traffic light in the corner of your room flipped to red, we had to be quiet. Thank you for teaching me that.

I want to thank my first grade teacher, Mrs. Cowart. When I was learning how to tie my shoes, you were very patient with me. And that was more stressful than you think. I still remember trying to figure out how to lips were poor. Also, that's when I learned how to speak in front of a group in show and tell in first grade. I had to think about what I wanted to communicate, so those were huge lessons for me.

Ms. Mayfield, my second grade teacher, you kept a tight ship in second grade, but you also taught me that if you work hard, you get to play hard. There was an Atari in the corner of the room, and that was the first moment I got to play Pitfall, which blew my mind. But it wasn't the focus. Like I wasn't trying to get to the Atari. I would work hard, and then you would reward that work with hard play. And I really enjoyed it.

So I still believe that today. Work hard, play hard. Learned that in second grade. Thank you, Ms. Mayfield.

Mrs. Tepper's third grade class. What kind of a teacher creates photo albums for their students? Ms. Tepper, that's who. This was an incredible class. I still remember where I sat and everything. I also want to thank Ms. Tepper for teaching me a very important lesson, and that is self-control.

I remember one time I was laughing in class. I couldn't stop, and Ms. Tepper said, "Why are you laughing, Dest?" And I said, "I can't tell you. I'm sorry." She said, "Out in the hall, young man." And so I didn't know what happened in the hall. Like, do you just die there? It was a terrifying thing.

So I'm in the hall, and then she comes out, and she says, "Destin, why are you laughing?" And I said, "I'm sorry, Ms. Tepper, I cannot tell you." And she said, "Well, maybe you could write it down." I said, "Yes, I will write it down." And I remember writing it as small as possible to hide my shame. And I can still visually see what I wrote on that paper.

I can only imagine, as Ms. Tepper held that up to her face and read, "Brandon Poo did loud." That was the reason I couldn't quit laughing in third grade. But she taught me about the importance of keeping control of yourself in a group, and I learned that in third grade. I had to go to the hall to learn it, but that was a huge lesson. I love Ms. Tepper. Thank you so much for everything you did for me. By the way, sorry, Brandon, didn't mean to throw you under the bus there.

I want to say thank you to my fourth grade teacher, the late Mr. Keenan. He took great interest in how I hold my pencil. And I still hold my pencil like Mr. Keenan taught me to to this day. And it matters. Like he took the time to invest in how a young man holds his pencil, and it changed how I do this for the rest of my life. And it was that great care and attention to detail that influenced me.

Thank you, Mr. Keenan. I want to say thank you to my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Easley, and I've asked her if she's willing to say a few words because she's so special, and I want you to know who she is.

Teaching is something I've really enjoyed, and I have been retired for a little bit, but there are just some students that you remember, and I remember Destin. He was special, and he was vertically challenged, but he didn't know he was. That was the special thing about him. He was so confident. He had all this charisma, and he had a little posse of boys that were always with him, his friends.

So that's what I really remember about him and asking questions and into things and always wanting to do science experiments. So over the years, even I used Destin's story about him being vertically challenged whenever I would have another vertically challenged child in my class. And it always seemed to work.

Mrs. Easley is angelic. I love her. But one thing that always confused me is she read this book to us called Miss Nelson is Missing, and in this book, it tells a story about a class that has a substitute teacher come to school one day, Viola Swamp.

And the weird thing about this is, after she read this book to us, the next day in Ms. Easley's class, none other than Viola Swamp walks into the room, and it's almost she looked a little bit like Ms. Easley, but she kind of said the things that I think Ms. Easley would really want to say. I don't know. It was just a really weird experience.

“Oh, I’d take time out of my schedule to do this. Oh my gosh, I’m glad to be here. But I’m missing a day of substitute pay, which you wouldn’t believe how much we make now. Who?” Amazing kids. I remember one in particular, Destin, something saying, “I can’t remember.” Oh, my goodness.

I always ask the questions. Imagine that score. She really did look a lot like Viola Swamp. Yeah, that's so weird. Yeah, we were in fifth grade. We couldn't see it, though.

Looking back at the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade years, it was fantastic. I mean, the teachers really poured into us. Mrs. Wallace taught me about algebra in the Beta Club. She took us skiing, which was a pretty big deal for a young man from Alabama.

I remember the time Miss Teague in our TAG class, Tas Agnew did something in class, and we decided just to put him on trial right then and there. Tollie and the others wanted to know if the death penalty was on the table. We decided against that, but we learned a lot about injustice in our TAG class. That was amazing.

Ms. went and taught me the importance of poetry and how to slip the surly bonds of Earth. Miss Henry taught me how to make milkshakes and how to sew boxers. I still have the gun rack I made in Mr. Hurd's shop class. He told me how to work with my hands.

Coach Pope taught me how to be a leader, even though I was the smallest kid on the basketball court. Coach Williams took me to the 1994 Alabama Technology Fair. Me and Adrian and my buddies, thank you so much, Coach Williams, for taking us to that. It was awesome.

Mr. Chance taught us how to collaborate and work together in groups, even though he might have been a nerdy little boy. You know, they loved him, and everyone wanted to be in his group, and he would listen to their ideas, but then they would really listen to his.

She took us to Montgomery, which made my world so much bigger. She told me about the importance of being able to communicate what you're doing. Well, there are so many educators that don't go by the word teacher.

I remember riding the bus with Jan Sanders, my school bus driver. She still driving that bus. I think Ms. Maples kept the school running. The lunchroom ladies are fantastic. These are giants in my life.

School junior high was amazing. When it came time to go to high school, I went to Hartford High, and I didn't have many friends, and some of my teachers figured that out, that I needed a little help. Ms. Morrow in particular, I had to do all the summer reading in a week, and she helped me through that.

And I loved learning Shakespeare from her about mythology so much, in fact, that I ended up taking her folklore class. The quality of the education I received at Hartsville was unbelievable. Miss Teague taught me Algebra II and trigonometry, things I still use to this day.

Coach Booth taught me calculus, and I know it better than some of the people that I'm taking classes with because he told us these little things: "You want to take an integral, kick it up and divide by it. You want to take the derivative, put it down in front, decrease it by one. You want to do the quotient rule hoti hi minus Heidi Ho over ho ho."

I know all this stuff like in my bones because of the sayings Coach Booth taught me in Hartsville High School. The big leap came in Ms. Hodges’ class, which legitimately changed my life. She could just get so much out of my mind if she would push me in certain ways.

And she did that. There was always that student who not like most students. You go in there, you give them a test. They want to know what they've got to know to pass the test, that sort of thing that was not Destin. And Destin was always very interested in why is it this way and why does it work this way and what makes this work?

And so he would be over here doing his own thing, trying to test the kind of things you were telling him rather than just, "Hey, just take it for granted that this is the way it is." On a Saturday morning, he came out to my house one day, and he said, “I got this famous object I need to come out and show you something."

He had built this potato gun that would shoot 50 yards. And for a 10th grade student, that was really good. Ms. Hodges invited me to participate in something called Science Olympiad, and this legitimately changed my life.

My buddy Stevo and I, we decided to compete, and we built this thing called the Mission Possible. It's a Rube Goldberg type machine. But we learned so much staying up late, working on this thing. Basically, what it is, is a threaded rod fixed so that when it turns, it will move this aluminum piece down till it hits the marker.

Switch, marker switch turns this motor here, which releases the ping pong ball. He's wearing it up to here. Go all the way around the back to the rocket. Now, thanks to Ms. Hodges’ leadership, Steve Owen and I won the bottle rocket competition in the state, and that kind of like started a trajectory for us.

And more importantly, this was a moment in my life when I learned the word "engineer." That's when I learned what an engineer was and that I wanted to be one. One of the most influential people that have ever invested in my life was my 11th and 12th grade English teacher. Ms. Russian made me write every day.

That's what she did. You'd walk in the class, and you have to start writing. She knew that there was a communicator on the inside, and she wanted to make him communicate. And that's what she did. She took the time to have actual arguments with me about how I was saying things to make sure I learned how to communicate well.

And I'm so grateful because people think that the math and science thing is the most important thing about the smarter everyday stuff. It's not. It's how to communicate complicated things in a simple way. And this Russian taught me how to do that.

As I look through these pages of these yearbooks and I see all these teachers that have invested so much time into my life over the years, it makes you feel things because I know the truth, right? Like when I put something on the Internet, and a lot of people say nice things about it, that's nice to hear.

But the truth is, I'm just an Alabama kid that was fortunate enough to have a lot of teachers speaking into my life in moments when I needed it. They sent me in the hall when I needed to get in the hall. They taught me things that I didn't understand, and they challenged me in ways that I needed to be challenged at the precise moment that I needed it in my life.

And I'm grateful. Yeah, I'm grateful to the Lord that I've had this blessing, these opportunities in my life. I'm grateful to my parents for their time and investment in me. And I'm thankful for my teachers because my teachers have made me who I am today.

Okay. That's the video I made and some things that I did not expect. I did not expect this to mean so much to me, but it really did to say these things. And I want you to feel that too. And I want your teachers to know how you feel about them.

So here's a challenge. I'm going to straight up challenge you to do something. Go get your yearbooks. If you have yearbooks, go get them and just open them and look at them and just start thinking about what the teachers did for you and tell a story, a specific thing that a teacher did.

Get your phone, point it at that yearbook, point it at your face, and say something to your teacher that you mean and that you've always wanted to say, but you've never had a reason to. I just gave you a reason. Hashtag, thank your teacher. It feels so good. It really does get a little emotional.

But anyway, consider doing this because the nature of the relationship, they always had authority to speak into our lives. But now we're older, and we get to say the things that they did for us. We get to share the fruit of all their work with them, and it's beautiful. So consider doing that hashtag, thank your teacher.

That's it. I'm Destin, and get smarter every day. This felt really good. Thank you for watching this with me. I'm grateful for my teachers. Have a good bye.