An award long overdue to a teacher of teachers

I was so pleased to see one of my favourite teachers in the world, Mrs. Joan Blades, has been honoured for all that she has done for her students and for the Bermudian community at large. I was pleased to see a teacher had been bestowed the honour of a Queen’s badge. As I often feel the importance of teachers in children’s lives is overlooked. Taken for granted. Not praised enough. Not rewarded enough. And hence the best of people don’t often become teachers because they don’t feel they will get the accolades that others receive for doing less for the community.

Teacher like Mrs. Blades are more than teachers. They are mentors. Role models. People that children who have no one at home to give them direction provide children with direction. A roadmap on how to be in life and how not to be. They provide a touchstone for children who are wandering in the dark. I know because I was one of those children when my mother died in 1976. I don’t know where I would be today without teachers like Mrs. Blades.

Mrs. Blades was my Chemistry teacher at The Berkeley Institute when I was there from 1975-1980. But she was more than a teacher to me, she was a mentor, mother and friend. She taught me the importance of silent grace. Understated elegance. And more importantly that you don’t have to be loud to be heard.

That’s what Mrs. Blades meant to me. She was the calm in the storm. The silent warrior whose looks and expressions said more than any spoken word ever could. And she noticed me. Inspired me when so many others did not. Saw potential in me that others including myself did not know existed. She saw in me the vulnerabilities I tried so hard to hide. To suppress. She saw through my hard exterior and helped me to see there was so much more to life than the limited life I was living.

I loved Chemistry because I loved Joan Blades and still do. I think of how I wanted to please her so much because she always seemed to look out for me. I never wanted to disappoint her so I always tried my best with her. Her teachings staying in the back of my mind. Engrained forever not because I needed Chemistry for anything I would ever do in life. No because she taught it and I wanted to be in her presence.

Her quiet and understated yet powerful presence still remains within my psyche. And that’s the sign of a good teacher. A teacher whose teaching remains even when we are grown. Even when we become the adults and the teachers ourselves. When we learn that the teacher is always the student as is the student always the teacher. When we learn there is no difference between teaching and learning. That they are one in the same because in order to teach one has to learn and continue to learn to teach.

I am so pleased for the honour that has been bestowed upon one of my favourite teachers who became one of my surrogate mothers when I had no mother of my own. When she looked out for me and taught me how to be a woman of the world by giving without expectation or demand. Mrs. Joan Blades the epitome of a woman of quiet dignity, humility, reserve and grace. Refined simplicity who taught how to walk placidly amid the noise and haste.

For every Chemistry formula I had to memorize, what I remember the most about Mrs. Blades is that each and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For Mrs. Joan Blades I am eternally grateful and proud to have been a student of hers. So I am extending my heartfelt congratulations to her on being bestowed a Queen’s award. Not that she needed it anyway because she will always be a Queen of my heart and the hearts of many of her students forever.