Of all these things you taught me...

 ...when it rains...
 a single drop of rain. A tiny drop hurdling down through the thickening layers of atmosphere. Speeding down, down to land on the sharp granite shoulders of the Great Divide. Half flows west, carving  free a small bit of ancient mountain. Sweeping down through chattering ice cold streams that brush across high deserts, beneath towering redwoods. Shaping canyons and fertile valleys, carrying small bits of it's journey in a swirling current,  as it heads ever towards the great blue Pacific Ocean.
 Half flows east towards the powerful Atlantic,  rolling out before it's power- prairies and massive rivers and fertile deltas that feed the cities and towns of a country full of dreamers. A single drop of water changing every thing it touches and passes as it heads towards the ocean of it's destiny.
  When it rains, I do not just hear the passing of that single drop of water or it's splatter upon dry earth. I can not because I had great teachers in my life. Wonderful teachers that gave me their love of learning. Great teachers whose voices dripped so with excitement and passion, that it excited me and made me desperate to learn more and more. Many of these teachers I was lucky enough to be related to. My Uncle who taught me how that single drop of water carved and shaped the lands of our planet. My mother, who taught me how settlements were made or broken by land formations made by those waters and fall lines. My father whose sweeping  arms and dramatic voice carried me across land and time, as he taught me the history of  this land we walk on.There were also the teachers that did not have a subject so powerful as land or water or history, but were such good teachers that they could make anything they taught exciting. The teachers, that could teach that a drop of rain was so much more than just a drop of  sterile water, that made no impact on this Earth.
 So, with the rain I hear the voices of my teachers, wonderful teachers that taught me to listen closer, to hear more and see bigger. The teachers that pulled flat, dry words from a text book page and built from them a world huge and vibrant, that their students could step into like an ocean. An ocean they would want to swim in forever. The teachers, that like a drop of rain, change everything in their paths, in small ways, that make huge differences in the end.
 So, it is raining today and I am thinking of my teachers. Many who no longer walk this Earth with me, but who's voices always will, because they were that good!
I am thinking of my children's teachers, who I have come to treasure, because they are that good!
I am thinking of how so many in this world do not value them as they should be and dismiss them, as if they are of little value.
I am concerned, that these teachers of my children, will not know that they are, and always will be the tiny drop of rain that shapes and changes the souls they teach and the path they travel.