Limerick: Thanks, parents, for letting me teach your children

Original article can be found at The Denver Post  
Originally published on May 12, 2016 By Patty Limerick 

In a universe very distant from the one I inhabit, parents and teachers collide and clash. Helicopter parents make frequent landings, complaining that unfair standards and demands have been imposed on their children. 

I have had only visited that universe once. The child in this incident — confidentiality requires me to choose my words with a premium on vagueness — had shown something short of full awareness of ethics in his conduct during an exam. His father then wrote to inform me that his child was a person of impeccable honesty. 

Evidence did not line up to validate this assertion. 

But that was it: only one such incident in more than 40 years of teaching. I have heard plenty of credible tales of peevish parents. I myself have only a well-stocked collection of memories of meeting parents I liked as much as I liked their children. Earlier this month, that collection grew with a cascade of encounters that came my way in the commencement season. 

I should set the context for these events by explaining that my workplace, the Center of the American West, offers a Certificate in Western American Studies, and students who sign up for that certificate are in my company for years. Besides offering the certificate, thanks to kind donors, we also offer quite a bit of food: lunches with visiting speakers; dinners at Houston’s restaurant and my house with distinguished Colorado leaders, writers, musicians, artists, humanitarians and all-around characters; and a bowl with chocolates at the entrance to the center’s office (the chocolate is of high quality — currently Ghirardelli and Dove — and we would be eager to explore areas of shared interest with Enstrom’s in Grand Junction, in order to give our often-visited bowl better grounding in the Interior West). 

And, yes, if you have begun to detect a promotional and marketing dimension to this column, it would be hard to say you are wrong. Apart from the Center of the American West (which offers sustenance, though not housing), the University of Colorado has a robust collection of residential academic programs, as well as many opportunities for affiliation with departments and centers that can make a big university seem like a manageably sized neighborhood. 

As commencement ceremonies proliferated on campus this month, I entered a great phase of visits with parents. It was wonderful to observe the similarities and differences among mothers, fathers and offspring, and it was several stages beyond wonderful to hear the parents declare that, over the years, they had heard from their children many stories about the center’s cast of characters, the swirl of activities, and the encouragement and inspiration that affliation with us had delivered. 

And so commencement turned into a Festivals of Fictive Kin — very fictive, since I hold no direct ties through blood or marriage to these students. And yet their families have been gracious beyond measure in “adopting” me into kinship, conveying (sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly) that our shared affection for these young people has united us for the long haul. 

My gratitude to a long procession of parents who raised great kids and then gave me the honor of serving as mentor to these impressive young souls is beyond measure. 

And here, moms and dads over the decades, is your long overdue thank-you note.