By: Robert
I am a teacher.
I retired in 2005 after teaching psychology and human services courses for a couple of decades. After one year away, I came back as an (gasp) administrator. I now teach part time infrequently and provide marriage counseling one night a week in addition to my full time job of teaching faculty how to teach online, an irony which may come clear to you soon.
Since I work at a community college, loads of 15-18 hours a term are common, but I recall one semester a few years back where I, in an absolute lapse in sanity, agreed to 21 hours (six courses).
On more than one occasion that term, I found myself walking down the 500 hallway toward a yet to be determined classroom carrying two or three books I had snatched up on the way out of my office because I knew it was an afternoon class and it must be one of these and recognizing the backs of the heads of some of the students through the glass in the doors and walking in right on time and making my way to the front of the classroom speaking loudly enough to get their attention and saying something along the lines of "I was thinking on the way down here today we need to do something different in class today." And by the time I got to the lectern they were quiet and I knew what it was I was about to ask them to do. It was the worst and the best of times.
I miss so much using my years of experience and intellect and my intuition, most often my intuition, to teach and to teach well on a daily, demanding basis. I still relish those moments when, for the students, there are no cell phones, no nodding heads, no preening and admiring, none of that. Just silence, listening, while I hold them the way an actor holds an audience with his performance. That's not bragging; that's what a good teacher does. If I can make them feel and tear up a bit and swear to themselves that they will never do that or always do that or learn more about that, so much the better. They do remember those moments too, I am convinced.
Yesterday my wife and I attended the open house for the Iowa River Hospice in our town in Central Iowa where I was born and I have taught and administrated since the late 80s. One of the young ladies there several yards away through the crowd was wearing a name tag and caught my eye and smiled prettily as I recognized her at the same time and grinned and nodded back. Too far away to make contact then, we drifted while my wife and I examined new rooms and I assumed she answered questions about paint and patients. We made contact between floors on a landing and Paige hugged me and said "Thanks." I helped her with the decision to become a nurse, she said, and she was so happy to be at Hospice. She might have seen my eyes glisten. Hell, I don't mind, she has seen it before. What she didn't know is that my mom died not knowing for sure who we were two years ago while my family stood in a circle around her bed and a couple of Hospice workers rubbed her feet and held her hand and said your mom is gone now. Paige will do that too.
I am a teacher.
By: Wayne
For context, it would be helpful to read or listen to my “Last Lecture” <a href="http://(http://public.me.com/waynedickson2)" rel="nofollow">(http://public.me.com/waynedickson2)</a>. But the gist of what I say there riffs on Chaucer’s comment about the Clerk of Oxenford: “gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.”
My life has been about just that. And I’ve found in innumerable ways that, for me, neither learning nor teaching is complete without the other, and both together are greater than the sum of the parts. I’ll always continue learning, of course. But saying that is no more meaningful than saying I’ll always continue breathing. The problem will be finding satisfying ways of continuing to teach, one way or another.
I’m going to add a postscript to the lecture, though. With due awareness of his willingness to fudge a citation or quotation or allusion etc., I’ve always loved Walter Pater’s Conclusion to [Studies in the] Renaissance. In the passage relevant here he quotes Victor Hugo to the effect that we are all like prisoners condemned to death, but with an indefinite stay of execution.
That doesn’t make life futile. Rather, it makes each of its remaining moments infinitely valuable. In other words, I’m not going to wait around hoping opportunities to continue what I love might happen along. I’m going to get out there seek actively to find them.
By: Ryan
First of all, congratulations and thank you for giving your all for so many years. That said, thank you for a heartwarming list that I can certainly identify with, though I hope I never fall into the negative category of "Colleagues who have given up on teaching and are doing time in the classroom—the ones who’ve locked themselves out of meaningful, trusting relationships by using policies and practices that render all encounters with students adversarial."
Articles such as yours makes teaching refreshing when all hope is thought to be going down the drain.