Real Heroes

Events of late have left me thinking and reflecting about heroes and their roles in our lives. When I was growing up my mother was my hero. She is a strong, intelligent, motivated woman that is always there for her family. She was also a full-time nurse in an intensive care unit, highly admired by her co-workers and supervisors, and even won bedside nurse of the year. (I say was because she completed her master's degree a few years ago an is now a nurse anesthetist.) With all of these fantastic atributes, how could she not be my hero, right?
When I was classroom teacher, we always did an activity at the beginning of the year in which, among other things, I asked my students who their heroes were and what they wanted to be when they grow up. An overwhelming number of students would say that their hero was some kind of sports figure and that they wanted to be a professional athlete. Now, I'm not one to crush a child's dreams and aspirations, so I always tried to work at the angle that the students needed to be successful in school in order to get a scholarship into a D1 school and get drafted/selected for their desired professional sport. But this is also when I started really thinking about how professional athletes size-up as role models and heroes.
Don't get me wrong, there are a number of pros out there that lead admirable lives. In fact, I used to work with an amazing teacher that had been a professional soccer player and now as a coach requires his students have passing grades to continue to play. But by and large, the athletes that make it into the news are also those that are being arrested or are in some other kind of trouble. It is this that I find troubling for children, not only my own but for all children. I feel like that if children see professional athletes making massive amounts of money and getting deals from Nike at the same time that those athletes are in the news about DUIs and being arrested on gun/drug charges it sends a terrible message to children. It says that breaking the law and immorality are excusable if you happen to know how to throw or catch a ball really well. It says that people will look the other way if do bad things to yourself and your family if you are also talented enough to help a professional sports team win championships. The same issues arise when we look to t.v. and movie stars as role models.
So, what can we do as educators and parents? Try to be the best possible role models ourselves. Let our children know that we are human and are flawed but show that we learn from our mistakes, that we are life-long learners and continue to grow every day. We need to continue to support our children and encourage them in their education and outside interests. We need to let them be OUR heroes, as they are already our future.

Image courtesy of Flickr and father09.