With gratitude to colleague and long-time friend George Plasterer —-

The Teacher Who Made the Difference

A sociology professor at Johns Hopkins assigned his class to a Baltimore slum to interview 200 boys. Their assignment: “On the basis of your findings, predict their future.”

Shocked at what they saw, the students estimated that 90% of the boys would someday serve time in prison.

Twenty years later the same professor asked another class to find the survivors and see what had actually happened.

Of the 180 they could locate, only 4 had ever been to jail. Why were the earlier predictions so wrong?

There was a common thread – more than 100 of them remembered having the same high-school teacher, Miss O’Rourke, who had been a tremendous influence on them.

After a long search, Sheila O’Rourke was found in a nursing home in Memphis. When asked for her explanation, she was puzzled and replied: “All I did was love every one of them.”

Made me think of all the Miss O’Rourkes the Lord puts in our lives – and whether we’ve taken time to thank them.