Recently, the importance of teachers has become glaringly obvious to me.

I spent a week this summer in a tutoring/outreach program for kids. I was in the third grade class, and one day their teacher decided to talk to them about why they should have pride for their country. For 10 or 15 minutes she spoke about why their lives matter in America. She told them that God put them in The United States of America as well as that classroom for a very specific reason. She told them that no one can fill the role He has prepared for them. She said she believed that every single one of them, along with herself and the other volunteers, had been put in that classroom to impact one another. She said that every single one of them has the potential to change the world in their own unique ways. Everyone in the world might not come to learn these third graders' names, but she encouraged them to begin change from the inside out. She said that adults think our nation needs better laws and leaders, but ultimately our nation needs God. And, since these kids aren’t old enough to be able to vote for laws and leaders, the way they can serve their country is by changing their communities and their families to be communities and families for God.

If that could happen with every single one of the kids in that classroom that means seven families and seven unique social circles would be changed. Imagine the ripple effect this would create all due to seven little kids deciding to do something out of the ordinary. She then became completely transparent, and she told us how doing that is so hard. She shared personal ways that she hinders her own family from flourishing as a family of God, and she told them that it’s okay to mess up and have to try again.

The kids were a captive audience while she talked to them, and we were all pretty stunned when it was all over. I don’t know about them, but that wasn’t a speech I will soon forget.

The immense power that her words and ideas had over these students, and over me, in such a small amount of time, blew me away. It made me start to think about what my life would be like if the teachers who have poured into me were taken out of the picture. Including my own mama. So many teachers have expanded my faith and my knowledge of academics and the world, and opened my eyes to my own passions and strengths. I am so thankful for teachers, from any school and any subject, who pour into people just like those precious third graders were poured into.

If you're a teacher, an education major, or anything in between, thank you. Teaching is such a normal part of life that it's often overlooked until we realize how different our lives would be without educators. They equip us for life in ways that we would otherwise be lost in.