We’re wrapping up Teacher Appreciation Week and on Sunday we’ll celebrate Mother’s Day. In a way, those two events are one in the same because our moms are our first teachers.

According to Hallmark, mothers teach us to be kind and gentle, how to share and how to make the world a better place. Teachers do the same thing with one major difference – they can flunk us if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do.

All of us have fond memories of our favorite teachers, and I’m no exception. But there’s a little twist this year – I’m also grateful to the slacker teachers I had.

Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely adore the great teachers I had like my high school English teachers Ms. Pruyn and Ms. Phillips and my chemistry and physics teacher Mr. Bizet who gave me B’s even though I didn’t deserve them.

In reality, the slacker teachers made me appreciate the really good ones.

There aren’t enough flowers, cards, gifts or expressions of gratitude for those educators who can teach a child that letters on a page translate into words that convey ideas to illuminate minds.

Or that a math teacher can take a reluctant child, get them to solve an algebraic equation and have them leave the class feeling successful.

And that’s what great moms do.

They make us feel like a million bucks when we feel like chump change. My mom makes me feel like a millionaire, and I’m thankful beyond words she’s still around mentoring and mothering.

Dee Hebert taught me to make a meal out of seemingly nothing in the pantry. She taught me Sunday dinners with family was sacred and to use the good tablecloth when serving that dinner. Your family, she taught me, deserves the best.

She taught me a mom can work outside the home and still be a fabulous mother. She showed me it’s really possible to have every one of your children secretly believe they’re the favorite because you treat each one as an individual with their own special talents and gifts.

As I think about all the wonderful things my mom has taught me, I think back to what I taught my sons. I did teach them how to bake a Chef-Boyardee pizza and how to work the can opener and microwave.

That counts as home cooking, doesn’t it?

I am almost ashamed to admit I introduced them to swearing. Yes, I used profanity in front of them but there’s almost no way to drive in rush-hour traffic or to come away from the grocery store after getting behind the neighborhood coupon queen and not drop a few choice words.

I’m hoping my sons will cut their slacker mom a bit of a break this year and remember I was really doing the best I could.

Even if that meant trying to pawn off Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup as home-made.

Even when I put on the Cartoon Network so I could grab 15 minutes of shut-eye after a sleepless night because you threw up at our bedroom door at 3 a.m.

You were showing us that it takes gumption to be a parent and a teacher. Luckily, moms and dads learn to roll with the flow. This includes natural parents, step-parents, mothers stepping up as dads, fathers stepping up as moms and relatives and friends taking on the parental duties.

And here’s a little secret:  these two jobs are the absolute best and most fulfilling callings in the world, even though the hours are long, the pay doesn’t come close to covering what you do and the thanks are few and far between.

So Happy Teacher Appreciation Week and Happy Mother’s Day to all those teachers and moms out there. You deserve all the thanks, hugs, kisses, flowers, bathroom slippers, perfume, chocolates, ceramic figurines and hand-drawn cards, complete with jelly smears, your little darlings can bestow on you.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.