You can count an apple’s seeds but not the seed’s apples
Even if my colleagues disagree, they will understand why I believe that teaching high school history and government is the best job in what must be the best career imaginable.
Typically, my students were more socially conservative than I was. They were aware that I was a former ACLU/OK board member and a pro-choice lobbyist, but they knew that all of their opinions, values and judgments would be treated with equal respect. They also knew how much I preferred addressing persons who disagreed with me on abortion with the term “pro-life” instead of “anti-choice.” OK, my (very few) black Republican students would get some extra ribbing, but often they asked for it by reality-challenged trash-talking during our lunch-hour basketball games (asserting that I fouled?!)
Teaching with an open door produced a bonus. Students, patrons or other visitors continually joined our debates. Often, parents would send their children back to school with their counter-arguments about politics, culture and the meaning of life. The same pattern occurred with preachers, who might urge prayers for me, but not censorship. One junior brought his pastor to class to present an alternative worldview, and he concluded with the words, “We can count the seeds in an apple, but not the apples in a seed,”
The metaphor speaks to last week’s 2016 Democratic Party Convention. We can count Bernie’s delegates, but we can’t even guess as to the number of future voters and activists baptized in the fires of the Bern. The metaphor also speaks to the unprecedented number of Oklahoma teachers who are running for office. We can count the number of educators who are elected this year, but we can’t predict the number of new leaders the grassroots rising of classroom teachers of all types will produce.
Teachers respectfully embrace opinions
Fortunately, teachers and our unions are uniquely poised to help make America unified You can count an apple's seeds but not the seed's apples - NonDoc:
