When we think of a teacher, the image that often comes to mind is confined within four walls filled with neatly aligned chairs. We picture someone well-groomed, dressed in crisp linens or cool trousers, standing before a blackboard that stretches across the room, hands marked with traces of chalk.
This is the picture of a teacher many of us carry—the ones we encountered as students and the ways they remain in our memories. And while there is truth in this image, it is also far too limiting.
Long before we ever stepped into a classroom, we already had teachers. Our first teachers were our parents or guardians, who held our hands as we stumbled, guiding us until we learned to walk on our own. The neighborhood kids taught us how to play, how to have fun, and how to work with others. Later came the teachers hidden within our relationships—both romantic and platonic. Even when they left us with heartbreak, they also left us with lessons that shaped us into better, wiser versions of ourselves.
The truth is, teaching is not confined to formal education. Even in scolding, in arguments, in difficult or disheartening moments, we are still being taught. There is never a time when we are not learning about our place, our relationships, and our purpose.
Every encounter, every shared experience, carries a lesson. The world itself is a vast classroom, finite in its resources yet limitless in its potential to shape us. We live in communities, in villages built and strengthened by generations before us. What we do today is guided by their desire to create something better than what they had. Yet, it has never been easy for individuals within a community to come together and see things through.
This is the quiet struggle we face—the tension of living not only for ourselves but also with and for others. It is this struggle that Kalpesh Desai captures so beautifully in the poem Silent Battles:
As I toss from side to side.
Haunted by things
I could've or shouldn't have done,
Secrets that I'll carry to my grave,
Silent battles that I had won,
And moments where I hadn't been so
Brave.
As we often overlook what it means to be a teacher, we also tend to ignore the role and light we can bring to the community that has nurtured us along the way. We might worry, “If everyone has done this for me, what can I do for them?” and struggle to find an answer. In the absence of confidence, our fears and anxieties creep in to plant seeds of doubt. However, this wasn’t the end of the poem. In fact, it concludes:
I know I must break the mold in which the
die was cast,
To be absolved of pride, ego, guilt, and pain.
The persona reminds us that even when it feels as though we are cornered at a dead end, there is always more to do. The efforts of those in our community to lift us up—even when we feel imperfect—are never in vain. We each carry a purpose and a beauty that shines brighter when we are reminded to keep looking forward, even despite ourselves.
Our teachers were not perfect, and neither are we. Yet it is in that shared imperfection that we are called to grow. We owe it to those who guided us, and to ourselves, to break free from molds that no longer serve us. To keep improving. To keep growing. To keep healing.
There is truth in the saying, “It takes a village to educate a child.” The grace we once received calls us to extend the same grace to others. In our own ways, we are all teachers—through kindness, through guidance, through the quiet example of how we choose to live.
To be a teacher, then, is not just to pass down knowledge, but to remind others, by the way we show up in their lives, that life’s greatest lessons are found not in perfection, but in the warmth of a community that chooses to nurture, uplift, and believe in one another.
by Rae Goco