I have an immense amount of respect for teachers and feel honored to support them with acupuncture this month. Being married to a 5th grade teacher at a local school, I can see, first hand, how hard they work. I used to pop into my wife’s work during lunch when my daughter was younger and I’d see my wife, Katy, moving through this barely contained chaos with total calm and composure. Years ago I worked as a substitute high school teacher for about 4 days and it was totally brutal. I just couldn’t cut it. Katy has been a teacher for more than 10 years. I don’t know how she does it.
While I lack the ability to teach children, I do understand the rewards of teaching. I have been teaching yoga over 10 years. In the years before I went to acupuncture school, I taught about 20 yoga classes a week. While I loved doing it, and, being in my 20’s, I had the energy to do it, it was not easy. I was teaching at 9 or 10 different locations along a 100 mile stretch of Southern California. (You know why they call it the 405? Because wherever you gotta go, it’s gonna take you 4 o’ 5 hours to get there.) It was nice to be cruising all around town in my pajamas getting kudos and gracious namastes from everyone. But, I had to work REALLY hard to make a living. I suspect there are other teachers in the same boat. I want to recognize those teachers, too. Those who teach physical arts or music or tutor and are a little off the grid. They probably don’t have the health insurance benefits that most school teachers have and have to drive all over town to cobble together enough gigs to make a basic living.
A lot of teachers don’t get the kind of recognition they deserve: what they do is heroic, noble, and a huge positive contribution to society as a whole. I’m stoked that, here at OAP, we can spend a month dedicated to helping teachers out by making acupuncture even more accessible than we normally do.