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| North Myrtle Beach, SC - Cal Shook |
What does it take to become a teacher when you can barely see?
It takes “pushing through the pain”.
“Fortune favors the motivated.” – Jeff Goins, The Art of Work
1. What would you like to achieve?
Anne Sullivan pushed through the pain of limited vision, being abandoned, and living in poverty to dream of getting an education.
Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing at 19 months. As Helen grew, she desired a better method of understanding and interacting with people and the world around her.
2. Are you willing to push through the pain to get there?
At fourteen, Anne got up the courage to tell an influential adult that she wanted to go to school.
Because of her age, Anne was starting school at a disadvantage.
“Anne Sullivan's recollections of her early years at Perkins were mainly of feeling humiliated about her own shortcomings. Her anger and shame fueled a determination to excel in her studies. She was a very bright young woman, and in a very short time she closed the gaps in her academic skills.” – Perkins.org
Anne’s tenacity and determination, plus the support and nurturing of teachers and a housemother, aided her in graduating from Perkins Institute.
When offered the job to be Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne accepted. Her life experiences were well suited to Helen’s strong-willed personality.
Helen writes about meeting Anne for the first time.
“I felt approaching footsteps, I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother. Some one took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.” – Helen Keller, The Story of My Life.
Day after day Anne would have Helen touch an item, then finger spell the word into Helen’s hand. Then one day at the well-house, with water pouring over one hand and Anne finger spelling the letters in the other, Helen made the connection. The liquid pouring over her hand was “w-a-t-e-r”.
“That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set me free? There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. I left the well-house eager to learn.” – Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
As Helen’s vocabulary grew, so did her desire to communicate more effectively. Helen wanted to be able to speak and read lips with her hand. A woman named Sarah Fuller, principal of Horace Mann School, offered to teach her. Anne took Helen to the lessons.
“Miss Fuller gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first connected sentence, ‘It is warm.’ True, they were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.’ – Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
Effective communication takes time. Helen's words remind me that even if it’s not perfect, like putting the words together for this blog, it’s important to keep working at it. I desire to find “new strength” to find my voice.
Today we saw how Anne pushed through the pain of abandonment and poverty to complete her education. How not giving up and signing over and over until Helen made the connection, paid off. Once the connection was made, Helen thrived and wanted to push through to even greater achievement in communicating with others. In the next blog, we’ll go deeper into Helen’s journey toward fulfillment in “Be a Bridge Builder.”
Feel free to share your ideas and/or journey in the comments section below.
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Pushing through the Pain "Painful Practice" - The Art of Work by Jeff Goins
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