My mother is not what you would consider to be "educated" in the accepted definition of the word. She holds no college degrees, because she is from an era where a high school diploma actually was an accomplishment--especially when raised in the rural deep South during the 1950's and 1960's. She has never even taken a class of any kind after high school.
But she is the smartest person I know. And the best teacher anyone could ever have.
I was a shy child. Painfully, awkwardly shy. My mother was the one who saw this, recognized it as a problem, and took action to change it. She forced me into situations where she knew I would be uncomfortable, and made me realize that I would survive interacting with other people. She knew I would only learn how to interact with other people by being forced to interact with other people. It is because of her and her constant reminders that "Terie, you're not gonna die! Just get out there and do it!" in that southern twang of hers (also accompanied by a pointed finger and a stern look) that I eventually had the courage to get up in front of a room full of teenagers and start teaching. By the way, no one that meets me today believes I was once that child that would look at and talk to no one; my mother was the one who had the smarts to change that. She knew, intuitively, that I would only change if I was forced to change--just like students truly learn only if forced into uncomfortable situations that make them put their learning together into coherent understanding.
Growing up, she nearly killed herself cleaning houses and getting other menial jobs to put food on our table. Because of this, she made her children make learning and education a number one priority, because she knew that an education was the only thing that was going to take us anywhere. My twin sister and I were not allowed to have jobs during high school, because we were to put our time and effort into our schooling. Therefore, any cries of, "I'm just not good at this!" or "I can't do this!" or "The teacher hates me, that's why!" fell on deaf ears. The only response we got was, "Tough. You can do it. Work harder. Ask for help. But you can do it, you can get better, and you will." Without knowing it, my mother was a very early proponent of the growth mindset, detailed by Carol Dweck. She pushed us, all the time. She never told us we were "smart" or "talented;" in our house, it was assumed you would work, and work hard, to get better. Rewards came from a job well done. And, once the job was done, we were told to work harder the next time around. Hard work didn't make you stupid; in our house, hard work was the path to improvement. And, as it was always implied (but never spoken), we could always be better than we were presently.
Not once did my mother ever cave in to our whiny teenage demands to accept less than our best. When we showed her a report card that did not represent our fullest potential, she asked what went wrong. What we were going to do to fix this. To change it. To get better. And then she expected us to do it. And we did.
She won't admit to any of this. I've tried to explain it to her, but she just scoffs at me, saying, "I just did what needed to be done to make you see you could do it and be better." Southern mommas, you see, can be very, very stubborn.
But I want her to understand what a huge difference her efforts made to me. I can only imagine what kind of person I would be today if she had never pushed me into uncomfortable situations, never settled for less than my best, never asked me to reflect on what went wrong and find a way to fix it. If she hadn't been my best teacher ever.
Thanks, Mom, for doing what just made sense.