As Summer Approaches

As May turns warmer here in the Midwest and the calendar sees Memorial Day on the horizon, you know the end of the school year is just around the corner. That means graduation, final exams, closing up shop for another year and celebrating the end of the teaching career for many of my friends and those teachers unknown to me.

It is a long road for certain. Perhaps it started out with a bit of trepidation, long nights and weekend with lesson planning and grading and the uncertainty of how to get a class or individual to see the worth of coming to school. Those of us who taught learned to listen and to adapt...often on the fly. We learned that a lesson that doesn't work needs to be tinkered with or let go of in spite of our not wanting to let go.

Our teaching careers in essence were actually a series of being 'first year' teachers since every fall brought a new crop of faces to our classroom. This might have been one of the most valuable lesson I, and others, learned as we went about our careers. No class and no new school year, let alone the students, were ever the same. And that was part of the beauty of teaching.

So, to all those retiring teachers thank you for adapting, adjusting, changing, inspiring and being their to help your students. Those long weekends, nights that had too little sleep and 'talks' with individual students were all worth it. Think of all those positive and memoriable moments you shared with your colleagues and students and know that you made a difference.

Dick