Writers are Teachers at Heart

I am a teacher, above all other identities. My dream was to teach college from the age of nine or ten when my fourth-grade class visited the campus of Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. That dream was fulfilled in 2000 as a graduate teaching assistant. I found that I loved inspiring, encouraging, and helping students to appreciate their abilities and worth.

When I retired in 2017, I missed teaching so much, especially the sense of my value as an encourager. I felt the stories I had read or lived needed to be shared. I wanted a platform to continue to teach and remind people of their value and worth. I created a blog, Isaiah46 Ministries, to write stories and poems and to teach Scriptures in a way that allowed people to critically think about the world.

I enjoy the process of thinking of stories or poems to write. I learn and find joy in the writing of the stories as much as the readers. They are lessons I need to remember and which, at age 71, I think that others can benefit from so that their sufferings over a lifetime are fewer than mine.

Writing is cathartic. I have found peace in writing about some of the hurts and struggles of life, and to know that others may avoid the pitfalls I wasn’t informed about as a child makes me, as a teacher and an ordained minister, feel that I am living the Lord’s plan for my life.

Writing fulfills my sense of making a difference. There is a song from the great gospel singer, Ms. Mahalia Jackson, that says, “If I can help somebody as I travel along…then my living will not be in vain.” Writing allows my helper nature full reign.

The bloggers I follow are writers, poets, and photographers who have taught me so much and helped me to overcome dark times with a word of advice or a story or photo that resonates with my situation. I have learned as much as a follower of many blogs as I did in college, maybe more. They may not have doctorates, but they know how in their writings to touch emotions and connect us to the rest of humanity by stressing our similarities rather than our differences.

For me, writers are the best teachers.