Take a moment to recall the qualities of a teacher who inspired you to become a better person. Often when we think of these teachers, it is not so much their words that sets them apart as it is the qualities they consistently demonstrated, the way we felt around them, and the love we felt radiating from them. Perhaps they preached about values, but what lingers in our memories and what continues to inspire us to this day is who they were their character. Swami offers the greatest example of a teacher whose life radiates such an endless, silent stream of inspiration. When we inquire into how our own character developed, we appreciate how such teachers influenced us. More than just modeling values, they embodied them. A teacher might model certain values in the presence of the children, but it is those teachers who lived those very values that we recall most fondly. To embody a value, it must be something that we understand, cherish, and practice regularly in our words, thoughts and actions. It must underlie and shape all those other qualities we develop and that others experience while in our presence. In a study of how good teachers nurture character, Leslie Laud (2000) found that the qualities of who the teacher is, essentially the teacher’s character, seemed to have the most impact on the children’s character development. While strategies and teaching techniques are important, they pale in comparison with the enormity of the teacher’s own character. Essentially, as suggested in Lickona (1991), “We teach who we are.” Similarly, Agne’s (1999) research on good teachers found that values are not so much internalized through instructional methodology, but rather, through the teacher’s way of being, perceiving, thinking, and believing — the teacher’s overall state of mind and heart. She argues that values are not taught so much through behaviors that can be replicated as through one having personally experienced them and integrated them into one’s being. She concludes, “[Children] learn by absorbing who you are to them, not by memorizing what you say. They will become you, like it or not.” Now take a moment to reflect on how well we embody those values that we wish to develop in our students. We can begin simply by examining those values we believe we currently hold, then evaluating our words, thought and actions to see if they are constantly in accordance with those values. The word ‘constantly’ is the rigorous test. For it means not only in the classroom but also in the teacher’s lounge, in the playground, in the grocery store, in our car and in our home. As we begin to discover the incongruencies between our avowed values and our actual actions, we can begin the process of remodeling ourselves. As we begin to practice these values more constantly in all aspects of our lives, we will unconsciously exude them through our body language, through the countless small encounters we have with students daily and even on more subtle levels because they have been incorporated into the most fundamental levels of our being. When a value is so deeply integrated into who we are that we practice it without hesitation and without a second thought, we begin to radiate it at all times, whether we are aware of it or not. Moreover, when we teach about the values that we have so internalized, students will gain an experiential understanding of these values by experiencing them through us and observing our example. Additionally, when we directly teach values that we have internalized, we teach from a level that is beyond just cognitive, so we influence the child on deeper and more experiential levels. We teach on a heart to heart level (Jumsai, 2000). Students will more readily accept us as role models because we will be seen as sincere and genuine in their eyes. Furthermore, teaching in this way is consistent with what we know about good teaching — that learning must begin with actual experience and that children learn through observing behaviors modeled. And now take a moment to imagine how much more powerfully and enduringly values might develop in students if teachers gave greater focus to living the values they wish to convey rather than to strategies they might implement or behaviors they might replicate. In our own journeys as educators, we have each experienced the value of teaching from this perspective. When our students are not practicing certain values, our first inclination now is to look within ourselves and examine how well we are practicing them. In retrospect, we have all found that when we look within, deeply and honestly, that those values that have been most difficult to teach have been the very same values that we most struggled with in our own lives. Each of us has searched for the ideal way to develop character. While we still believe in the importance of actively developing character through building community and using appropriate strategies and lessons, our journeys have taken us to the understanding that we teach person to person, not program to person. The teacher translates the program. And in this case, the translator is everything. As Swami says, “Your character is the best tool for the profession you have entered upon; your learning is of course valuable, but, one can excuse a little less of it; character on the other hand, must be cent per cent, perfect. “(Sathya Sai Baba, SSS VII, 9-5-68) Perhaps if we viewed the teacher’s character as the primary tool for influencing students, we might begin to devote ourselves more fully to the exacting, humbling and, by far, most rewarding task before us — that of becoming the kind of spiritual athlete that can constantly live spiritual values in our lives and in the presence of the students we teach despite the most formidable provocations and challenges. Only through sincerely walking this walk ourselves, will our lives inspire our students to do likewise. By Leslie Laud, New York, Stephanie Mew, Hawaii, Kathy Feely, Missouri