The first paragraph in Henderson’s chapter one really hit home for me. The idea of a teacher who teaches a way of living, someone who you will not forget, instead you will try to get in touch with them as an adult, to thank them is an idea I can vouch for. I consider myself fortunate to have had such a teacher in elementary school and like Henderson says in the chapter, she did help me “discover purpose and meaning in [my] life” (p.3). To this day, I believe she is the reason I have wanted to become a teacher, as her way of teaching was truly inspirational for me. Mainly, it was the value she had for education and how she attempted to instill this value in her students – she was so motivated. In fact my application for the BEd program was based around this inspiration and at this point I sent her an email thanking her for teaching us the way she did. The rest of this chapter was actually very new to me and so it was a good learning experience for me. I honestly did not know much about the relevancy of democratic living to education. However, as I went along there were lots of little details that I definitely believed in previously but just did not know of the connection they had to democratic living. For example, I have always appreciated the concept of being a lifelong learner has been drilled into my system thanks to my parents and I now understand the relation it has to teaching for democratic living. The last paragraph also caught my eye: the idea that we should look at our “frustrations as hurdles rather than obstacles” (p.30). I thought this was a great perspective on dealing with any issues in a positive manner. I think it is key to learn how to use any frustrations to your advantage, to learn from them so that you can grow as an educator.