Walking The Dog

It’s time for another dog story. I was out walking my dog and I noticed all the liter people throw on the ground, garbage, sandwiches, all sorts of things. I have a puppy and, like most pups, he likes to eat anything he can get a hold of. I try to catch it in time and stop him from doing so, but do not always succeed.

One reason to try and prevent this is to keep my dog safe. I have no idea how safe it is for him to eat things thrown out. I know if he were in the wild, he would eat all this stuff. The fact, however, is he is not in the wild and animals in captivity, or in my case owned by humans, tend to live longer than ones in the wild.

The bottom line is, the actions of others can have an impact on the life of my dog. Someone throws something on the ground and does not even think about it and my dog eats it, it could cause damage to him. On the other hand, many more people are conscientious. I don’t even know everyone who has passed by there and not committed such acts but to them I say, “Thank you,” as they are helping to keep my dog safe.

Teaching is a lot like this. It is the actions of others, in this case teachers, that have an impact on the students long after the student is no longer in the classroom (at least that is what we like to believe). It is the action of parents, friends and even strangers that have shaped that person into the individual s/he is before the student ever enters our classroom. The things we do have an impact on everybody else and we need to do our best to make sure that impact is a positive one.