No student written off
She laments the grade inflation that has become the cowardly response to pressure from some well-educated and well-heeled parents who set their hearts on Harvard for little Johnny or Jill before their children have learned to read.
One year her playful students “kidnapped” her then-4-year-old son, leaving a ransom note vowing to return him only if she awarded every student an “A.” Of course, she refused. It was not until the party disbanded that she found Peter, a coconspirator, fast asleep in his bedroom closet. Peter has become a teacher, too.
Eileen McNamara, Boston Globe, 5/12/02
It’s time for you to retire.
How delightful to have done what we love to do––and up to the last minute. Why waste the joy of our daily life. We wonder why some colleagues choose to tread water until retirement, to fade out.
Jeanie Goddard chooses otherwise. The thrill of enacting the twenty-fifth and final Thesis Night, knowing that it will be her swan song. She chose her path in life and stayed on it.
David Mallery, beloved counselor to thousands of teachers, at the close of his Experienced Pro Workshops invites participants to shut their eyes and create slides in their minds for each stage of their lives and teaching career. His last slide: “You are at the end of your teaching days, the last day. What do people say to you? What do they remember you for?” His last questions brought tears to some, acknowledging their last day would come. We would do well to pay attention to Mallery’s ‘slides’ and anticipate how we might live our chosen life path.
For Jeanie Goddard (and her fellow-teacher husband Brooks who retired two years earlier) the end is a celebration––a celebration of a teaching life well lived. We should want that for ourselves.
~ ~ ~
You can choose to cultivate your life’s path, despite being buried under countless outside pressures thrust upon you to conform to expectations. Goddard’s attitude “to convince the writer of a C-plus paper that this does not make him a C-plus person” makes sense in any field, as does her accompanying comment, “We do our children no favors sparing them from hurt and from struggle.”
Wherever you are in your career, imagine yourself at your last day at work. What will have distinguished you? What will your colleagues say? How will your workplace be different because you were there? Invoking self-reflection on the longview gives you a perspective on who you are, on what you offer––and what you may be remembered for.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.” (Kierkegaard)
I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Substack or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
