The Teacher Was Trying to Tell Me

Proverbs 5:13:

“Oh, why didn’t I listen to my teachers? Why didn’t I pay attention to my instructors?”

Today’s Episode: The Teacher Was Trying to Tell Me

World Teachers’ Day gives me permission to confess: I have not always been an easy student.

My best friend, Andre Jones, and I were buddies from fifth grade through eighth grade. We had a teacher named Mrs. Lloyd. And I thought Mrs. Lloyd was the spawn of hell.

She was stern. Consistent, and saw EVERYTHING! She would not let me charm my way out of anything. Every reading assignment, writing assignment, and mathematical problem had to be done. Mrs. Lloyd wasn’t accepting personality as a substitute for education”. I can hear her saying something like that to us students right now.

Years later, Andre and I were sitting in a San Diego bar, both of us in our late forties, and I brought up Mrs. Lloyd. I was ready to trash her. I expected Andre to join me.

Instead, he said, “She was the best teacher I ever had.”

His eyes lit-up as he talked about her love, her care, and her investment. I realized I had missed all of that because I was not willing to listen.

Proverbs 5:13 says:

“Oh, why didn’t I listen to my teachers? Why didn’t I pay attention to my instructors?”

In its immediate context, Proverbs 5 warns against choices that bring regret, especially sexual choices that damage life and relationships. This verse is the voice of somebody looking backward, finally understanding what the warnings were trying to prevent.

But that regret can travel. Sometimes the teacher was trying to tell you something before you had enough life experience to understand it.

Mrs. Lloyd was a Black woman teaching in an inner city Catholic school full of children of color.

Looking back, I believe she saw a young Black boy who would one day become a grown Black man—and she knew charm would not be enough to carry me everywhere I needed to go.

She was not trying to break me. She was trying to build something my smooth talking could not fake.

Not every harsh voice is wise. But some correction is motivated by the type of love that’ll get in your face and tell you about yourself. Some instruction feels harsh because it’s purposely protecting a future you cannot yet see.