Drew
Geoffrey Kopf on Values
Teaching
is perhaps what I do best and what I love to do best of all.
When I was a kid I taught
other kids how to play tennis. In those days tennis was no where near the
popular activity it is now. Sweat bands had not yet been invented. We wore
white handkerchiefs all twisted up and tied in a knot behind our heads. I
worked. Tennis garb was all white back then. I had taken private tennis lessons
at Camp Yukon in Winthrop, Maine and had a good concept of the game and was
well grounded in the basics. I loved seeing someone “get it” after
having worked with them for while on say playing a shot at the net. I would
see their face during what I call an “Ah Ha moment”, when some
one not only does something the way it needs to be done but that they know
just how they did it and know that they can do it again when the need or want
to.
I taught kids who were
preparing for their Bar Mitzvah how to read Hebrew so that they could get
through it and know what the text was all about. That was kind of radical
in my circles because most fellows memorized the chanting of the Biblical
pieces from a 45 rpm record cut by a cantor for that purpose. They rarely
knew what the words meant, though they did have an understanding of the meaning
of the overall piece.
I taught Public Speaking,
Acting, and Fencing, Fencing for the Stage, Interpersonal Communications,
Racket ball, coached actors and opera singers and sold the World Book Encyclopedia,
real estate and most recently floor mats of all kinds, and I am sure that
there is a commonality to what I did and how I did every one of these things:
I wanted to help those with whom I was working that they can be better than
they are.
That was and perhaps is
the thread that runs through everything I do.
Towards that end, I have
become aware of what I label values. These are ways of living and doing things
that may go beyond traditional guidelines for living as put forth in religious
doctrines and theologies; or at least to view such guidelines from a point
of view that I believe helps put them into clear relief and thereby makes
them that much more accessible for incorporation into ones way of operating.
It is my practice to somehow include these values in whatever activity I may
be involved.
The following are examples
of these values:
