All of us can reflect back on our many years as students with varying emotions. Some teachers we enjoyed when going through their classes, while others, well, not so much.

A few teachers even came off as rockstars from the very first day they walked into the classroom.  And that continued through the entire class experience.  Others, though, were more like a fine wine that required a bit of aging--for the student, not the teacher. 

I've found that for many of the best teachers we won't fully appreciate what they're doing for us when we're going through their classes.  To best evaluate some of those teachers, it may take years before the full impact of what they did for us is realized.

Some of us were fortunate to work in positions of educational leadership where we had opportunities to visit with graduates many years after they had exited the classroom (decades, in some cases).  What I always found fascinating were the instances where a former student eventually caught on as to how much a specific teacher had done for them--even though they hadn't a clue at the time they were going through the class.  As it turns our, some of us learn willingly, while others take additional "encouragement." And some of what we ultimately end up learning in their classrooms won't actually pay dividends until many years later.

Here's Lesson 7 from Chapter 3 in From Start to Finish.  There are sixty-five of these lessons integrated throughout the book, but in this one I offer a longer-term perspective on teachers and what they ultimately mean to our ultimate successes. 

Lesson 7:  You'll Thank Them Later

I have learned from and worked with so many effective teachers over the years. As a student, I enjoyed most of my teachers. Some, however, I failed to fully appreciate at the time. 

But as I’ve heard from many students over the years, some of the most important lessons learned in a classroom setting aren’t fully understood or appreciated at the time. Those experiences, while difficult, often prove to be an investment that pays future dividends.

I once taught with an accounting professor, Paul Bohrer, who many students thought of as downright mean and unnecessarily difficult—and for no discernible reason at the time. If a student fell asleep in one of his early morning classes, it was not uncommon for him to continue lecturing while walking toward the student’s desk and—without breaking stride in his lecture—WHAM! Paul would slam a stack of books down on the desk. It only took once a semester for all students to remain wide awake to experience the wonders of accounting that term.

Many of those same students would return years later and thank him profusely for pushing them as hard as he had. Were it not for him, many claimed they would never have passed their CPA exams. 

In high school, I enjoyed Jim Brown as a teacher and as a person. I simply didn’t like math that much back then. It was the academic equivalent of “Eat your vegetables, because older, wiser people told you they’re good for you.” During those high school years, I watched Mr. Brown as he engaged in his own academic cage match with so many of us, like my friend, Jon Woodroof.

Mr. Brown did his absolute best to get algebra concepts drilled into our heads. That must have made for some challenging days at his house outside of school as he no doubt would agonize over the resistance he encountered day after day in those classroom face-offs. But as I’ve told many of my own students over the years, I credit Mr. Brown’s Algebra II class more than any other for preparing me with the quantitative skills necessary for understanding and solving a wide range of business problems later in life.

Elsie (Lynn) Welch was our primary high school English teacher, and even though I didn’t particularly enjoy her classes or the assigned “three-point themes,” she taught me a lot about how to communicate effectively in writing. The repetition of writing and then re-writing those required papers has stayed with me to this day when I begin drafting a written report or speech.

In none of these classes did I have the maturity at the time to willingly pay the price to learn what was needed. I learned because the costs of not completing the assignments outweighed the costs of completing them. And yes, I am now very thankful to those teachers who pushed me even when I didn’t want to be pushed and when I didn’t value what was being taught.