“What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
What makes a teacher great is compassion and the ability to connect with one’s students.
I have talked several times about amazing teachers on my blog. I have also talked several times about being a person with a disability. My disability made going through school difficult. Despite my struggles through school, I have a college degree, and I managed to graduate college with honors. I wouldn’t have been successful without the help of wonderful and compassionate educators. One such educator was one of my college professors, who I will call Prof. A.
Since I was a student with a disability, I received accommodations. One accommodation I received was extra time on exams. Also, I took my exams in a separate location from my classmates to lower distractions, usually in a room at the office for students with disabilities. During one exam for Prof. A, I was unable to finish the test, even with the extra time. Prof. A took the time to check on me while I was taking the exam. When she found out I wasn’t finished with the test when time was up, she told me not to worry. She took me to her office and had me continue the test there. Before she took me to her office to finish the exam though, she took me to the cafeteria to eat, knowing that I had been working on the test for hours.
In that moment, Prof. A showed me what it really means to be an educator. She showed me that teaching includes more than the ability to pass on information in a digestible way. Teaching also comes with a heart ready to love and understand. This is a what makes a great teacher.
I just received a notification from WordPress that said I’ve published over 100 posts on the platform! Yay me! But seriously, this is wonderful. One of my fears when I started blogging was that I would run of ideas to write. Here I am nearly six years and 100 posts later, and I’m still going. I started this blog because I believe everyone has an interesting and important story to tell, and I wanted to share mine.
Sharing my story and experiences has been a wonderful journey so far. I’ve talked a lot about my experience with a genetic disorder called Turner syndrome on my blog. For years after I was diagnosed as a teenager, I kept my condition to myself, only sharing it with a very select few people. As I grew older, I started advocating for myself, and I needed people to understand what my day to day life is like as a woman with Turner syndrome. This inspired me to share my story. One of my first blog posts was “Imperfectly Perfect: Life with Turner Syndrome”. The truth is, I actually wrote this blog post for a major magazine. I submitted it, but never heard back from any representative from the magazine company. That’s when I decided to create my own platform. That’s how Life with Charli came about! I was nervous about starting a blog, but I realized that if I wanted more awareness on Turner syndrome, I needed to be comfortable with sharing my story.
I have also talked a lot about dealing with mental illness on my blog. I have mentioned many times on my blog that was hesitant to start therapy and medication for my mental illness. To be honest, even up to the time I started my blog, I was still hesitant. However, I noticed a lot of other bloggers boldly talking about mental illness with no shame. Then, one day, I asked on one of X, then Twitter, if anyone would like to share their story on my blog.
I was so happy when I got a response from a fellow writer Lesley Skinner. When Lesley told me that she wanted to write about mental illness, I gladly collaborated with her and published “Christianity and Mental Health”. Around that time, a fellow blogger, Nadine, shouted me out as a fellow mental health advocate.
I was shocked, because I didn’t see myself as one. However, I happily accepted the praise. It wasn’t really my intention to focus on mental health, but looking back, that was a topic I have been talking about from my very first post “This is Life: Your Purpose, Your gift”, which focused on self love. Other early posts that followed also focused on mental health, like “Judgements and Assumptions”, which focused on social anxiety. I just did not realize how connected to mental health those posts were. I was just writing my experience. Amazingly, people were listening responding so positively to what I had to say. Little did my fellow bloggers know, though, that I was listening to them too. I decided to reach out for help with my mental illness like so many of my fellow bloggers, and was officially diagnosed with depression and borderline personality disorder.
It felt so good to finally be getting help. I’m very grateful to the bloggers who have had an influence on my mental health and blogging journey. With the beautiful feedback I have been receiving throughout my time blogging, I know my story has reached others as well. For instance, a beautiful soul took the time to send this email to me:
A very warm thankyou to you my friend, and to all those who have been supporting me through all this time. If you are sharing your story online like me, know that people are watching and listening. You are making an impact on someone’s life. Keep sharing your story.
Thankyou for visiting and helping me celebrate 100 published posts. Here’s to 100 more.
I found the blog post above through Facebook! It really is a gem, and I relate to it so much! For a very long time I was going through depression and thought it was normal, just how I was. I was very wrong. It is not normal, and I needed help badly. Take a look at the above post, and if you feel like you relate to it, please know it is ok to seek out help.
I recently read in the news that a television personality named John Brenkus passed away by suicide on May 31st of this year. He was 54 years old. He was a well known figure in the sports world. I have talked about my journey with mental illness many times on here on my blog. One of the hardest but best decisions I’ve ever made was seeking help. I have been suffering from mental illness from the time I was a child. Stigma kept me from reaching out for help for a very long time. As I read through the comments on the article about John Brenkus’s passing, I realized that even though we have come a long way with fighting stigma on mental illness we still have a long way to go.
Many of the comments fit into two groups. The first group are those who downplayed the seriousness depression, such as the examples below:
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The second was those who thought suicide is a cowardly or selfish act, such as those below:
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However, I did find comments that showed understanding and compassion:
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Depression is a serious mental illness, and someone who loses his or her battle with the illness was not weak or a coward. As someone who is dealing with depression myself, I can say it is not an easy condition to live with, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s hard to understand unless one is actually dealing with the illness his or herself, but compassion is not hard. I have had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful people online during my time as a blogger, but it is the truth that the internet can also bring out the ugly side side of humanity. The way to fight to fight the stigma of mental illness is through compassion. Compassion leads us to seeing each other as fellow human being worthy of love and understanding. So let’s try to be more loving and compassionate.
For those of you who are struggling with mental illness, please reach out for help if you have not done so already. If you are or someone you know is ever in a crisis, please reach out to your country’s crisis hotline. The hotline in the United States, where I, live is 988.
Thankyou for reading, and I’ll see guys in the next post!
Life with Charli 