This story I wrote for a special group of professional group: teachers.
In our school time we used to do a lot of jokes about them, invented pranks, and talked about which one we liked the least.
However, in the years after I left school, I did indeed realise how much they have taught me. Not only the stuff that is not useful, where we asked ourselves occasionally for what we will ever need this knowledge. No, instead I noticed how some things that once seemed useless to me, were now actually useful. The best example for that are rhetorical devices in the German lessons. What is this going to help me ever again? But then, during my studies, I analysed a speech and I was looking up my knowledge from the German classes again. And suddenly it was important. Not only for this particular speech, but for every speech and every text I wanted to have a closer look at. Through the rhetorical devices I could understand how the authors were constructing their texts and speeches, what they want to achieve with it and what it their reasoning behind it. Not only did I memorise the rhetorical devices, but with them I had tools to question, to reflect, that I could always come back to. Even now, when I don’t know every single device anymore, I know where they belong and where to find them again.
That I learned all of that already in school, these steps I understood only years after my German A-levels. Not only German, but so many subjects. And since these insights are probably often just realised after some time has passed, I assume that most teachers rarely see or hear about the fruits of their work. Therefore, I want to say right now: Thank you.