Long after I’ve retired from full-time work as a newspaper journalist, I continue to be grateful to the teacher whose encouragement started me on that career path.

I’ve told readers in the past how much I credit my sophomore English teacher with launching my journalism career.

My sophomore year was a tough one when I was told I had I switch from college prep to the commercial course because there was no money to send me to college.

If a student has that situation today there are still multiple ways to pay for college, including student loans.

Back then, high school and college guidance counselors summed it this way: No money, no college.

It was a hard pill for me to swallow and I struggled emotionally, losing my incentive to excel - until I was lucky enough to land in Miss Byerley’s English class. She was an inspiring teacher and I loved the writing assignments.

While she often wrote words of praise on my papers, one day she wrote across the top of the paper: You should work for a newspaper.

With those words, she did more than give me a compliment. She rekindled my motivation and launched my drive to work for a newspaper.

A few months later, I was hired as a teen columnist for our daily newspaper.

Since then, l never stopped. I’ve had a fulfilling, exciting career I never would have strived for without the encouragement of Miss Byerley.

In much the same way my husband says he had a lucrative career as an engineer only because his high school chemistry teacher encouraged him to go in that direction.

Many of us owe a debt of gratitude to encouraging teachers.

But it isn’t only professional teachers that can teach us life-enhancing lessons.

For most of us our parents were our first teachers and how they taught their “lessons” had a profound effect on our lives.

Probably most of you never thought of your parents as teachers.

Yet parents are our most influential teachers, and many of the lessons they taught us stayed with us throughout life.

While I never thought of my parents as teachers when I was young, the older I get the more I recognize they were invaluable in their lifetime role as my teachers.

I used to think my dad was the teaching parent because he was the one who taught me to swim, to crab and fish, to parallel park, and most of all, to delight in nature.

When I commented on the colorful leaves while we were on a long car trip he stopped the car so we could walk through the woods together. And he didn’t tell me I was foolish when I started collecting colorful leaves.

What he was doing was teaching - teaching me to stop a daily routine in order to appreciate nature. It was a lifelong lesson I learned well.

But the real teacher in the family was my mother. She taught so many values by her example, not just by her words. By always being there for us and by centering her life on family, we learned nothing worldly can be more important than family.

My brother said of all the things my mother did for him throughout her life the two things he most values is that she taught him to cook and to manage a budget.

“She taught me the important thing isn’t how much money you make. It’s how much you save,” he said.

She taught us to save to buy what we wanted, not to use credit cards to buy it faster. I could write an entire column on the little ways she taught me to save.

But her biggest lesson was that if someone in the family needs you, be there for them, don’t wait until you find it “convenient.”

When I got married and had children of my own I tried to teach them what I view as important things. I will probably keep doing that as long as I have breath.

The other night I woke from a sound sleep with the thought that I have to tell Maria one sentence that can change saving habits: Pay yourself first.

Don’t wait until you have enough money to save. That never happens. Instead, when you get paid, first put a set amount in savings. Small amounts add up over time.

What is both ironic and delightful is that while I’ve spent decades trying to teach my daughters things I want them to know, now they are the teachers.

Andrea is quite clever at solving problems and figuring out how to get things done - even in a foreign country.

During our mother-daughters trips to Italy, she found incredible Airbnb places and made good use of her Italian to get us get on the right trains traveling from one region to another. No easy task.

Maria is the one who patiently teaches me how to incorporate technology into my life. She also keeps amazing me with the depth of her knowledge when I call her looking for information.

It’s rewarding to have these two well-rounded teachers making life easier for me.

Think about those that helped or influenced your life.

When you think of those that made the biggest impact, you might realize not all of your teachers were in a classroom.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.