Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Reflection on 41 years

41 years is not a particular milestone for a career. 40 years would be a more appropriate time to stop and reflect, but quite honestly, I just now did the the mental math and realized this term ends 41 years. The time has slipped by quite quickly, so if that indicates anything, it likely suggests that I have enjoyed a “good” career to date. So, what have these last 41 years teaching meant for me? Why have I continued in a career that many would never consider? Did I just never get over the idealized view that “teachers can change the world”? Did I just not feel prepared to take on any other career? Was it just easier to stay with the known, “don’t rock the boat”?

For me, it has been something deeper than those over-trivialized questions we tend to ask ourselves about careers. So what was it that drew me to teaching and has kept me in it? How have the last 41 years been?

To be honest, the initial draw was probably the safety of doing something I knew and something that was approved of by my immediate family. Lutheran teaching, what could be more safe than that? It didn’t take long for me to realized that there was nothing more magical about teaching in a parochial school than anywhere else. There were parent issues, “problem” students, and even issues within faculties and between pastors and teachers, and the pay was not great in the beginning. But…no matter what those other issues might bring, when I walked into my classroom, 99% of the time they all were forgotten. Here, it was just the kids and me. Here, I got to exchange ideas with my students, I got to expose them to new ideas, watch them as they confronted those new ideas and made them their own. I got to watch them grow in ways their parents might never get to see.

To be honest, there have been times when I thought of getting out of the classroom, but those feelings never lasted for long and I always came back to it, not with a sense that I had nowhere else to go, but rather with a renewed energy. At the end of the day, I have loved the challenge of working with kids, teaching them academics but also how to be in this world with each other, how to be their better selves. Many look for education to simply be an avenue for a good job. I see education being an avenue for having a good life, for growing an individual into someone who will make the world he or she inhabits into a better place, someone who will advance humanity just by being there.

So…I guess I have never gotten over the idea that good educators can change the world. And, as I look towards the end of my career, whenever that may be, I think that is what I will have the hardest time giving up. Working with kids and ideas and helping them to be their better selves so they can make a better world.