 Jonathan Guilentine is president of the retired arm of Hawaii's State Teachers Association. He's an NEA Foundation donor and a global learning fellow from the class of 2012. I'm from Kaneohe, Hawaii, and I worked in Hawaii's public school system for 36 years, primarily in special education but also in the field of early childhood education. In 2017, Jonathan was inducted into the National Teacher's Hall of Fame, a humbling experience for him and a chance to publicly acknowledge the impact some teachers had on his life. For me it was kind of a legacy for my family. I always go back to connection to them. We had a rough time of it and I wanted to honor my family, not just it wasn't for me so much but my profession and my family to thank them for the support they gave me all through my life. Growing up, Jonathan went through numerous adverse childhood experiences. Though his teachers were not aware of the details, he says they helped him become resilient. They understood we don't always know who comes in the door and we cannot make assumptions that everything is fine, everything is wonderful, perfect, even though they might not be aware that they can make a difference. In my story, I harkened back to three teachers in my intermediate school year, seventh, eighth and ninth grade. Adolescence was pretty rough. Everybody has trouble in adolescence but I had the challenges of my home life. My seventh grade music teacher, Mrs. Lau, who was very structured in her approach, but yet she shared the beauty and the language of music with us in a way that was very meaningful. She also made us understand it was important to know the words of the songs that we were singing and what they meant, what they represented. For example, the star-spangled banner, the state anthem of Hawaii, Hawaii Pono'i and in the end, she very subtly, very carefully helped us to begin to identify what we valued in life and what things we should value even if we didn't and what things we could kind of set aside. And you know, it was a music class. It wasn't about life but yes, yes, teachers do that. They teach about life. The second teacher was my eighth grade homeroom teacher and typing teacher, Mrs. Kono, Eva Kono, and she was very fastidious in her approach to her job. But she also had a soft heart and one day she told me, I just want you to know you're my all-American boy and I thought, well, that was so nice of her. I don't know what that's about but I smiled and I thanked her. And later on, I met her all-American boy from last year. So I knew it was a real thing for her to have, to pick a boy. Maybe she picked a girl too but she didn't explain and I needed to hear that. That was at a time that was very difficult for me. It was nice to be seen, to be seen and heard and recognized. So that was a treasure that I always remembered. The third teacher was Mrs. Lum. She was my ninth grade French teacher, very young but very energetic and learning a new language was something many of us hadn't experienced before and she just brought such vivaciousness to that and she encouraged us and she just helped us along to meet levels of excellence that we didn't really think about. When I was a senior, I was invited to join her and some of the students at her new school to go to Europe on a language study tour and the experience was really just life-changing, very powerful for me and I told her many times that it really opened my eyes to a global experience. I think teachers can have an impact, a positive impact on kids without knowing all those specific details, simply by seeing them, by hearing them, by appreciating them and I'm sure teachers do that with many, many children just by the nature of who they are as people, by their role as a teacher, by their commitment to their profession.