Discovery

I’ve known most of my life I love teaching. A happening today helped me define why. Today I went to the 10th year of graduating 8th graders from what began in fall of 2011 as Nehemiah Middle School, my second retirement job. A sequence of various employments had begun in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. I have notes in a file folder from various experienced teachers that were instructions and ideas for the green girl on the team. We needed to be in a certain place at the end of the year. yet we all didn’t follow the same path. I ventured from there to Elliot Elementary near the Ship Channel in Houston. Houston still had split years and from September to January I taught the last half of 5th grade and had a group in late January to start anew at the beginning. In five years at River Oaks Baptist I reached content goals with Lords and Ladies Day (required costumes), Little House on the Prairie Day (cook venison stew), and Patriot Day (a picnic with old timey games). I concluded gainful employment at Kinkaid for ten years. Five of us teachers made a team to each shepherd five groups of seventeen per period. We met formally and in the hall to discuss ideas and problems, blending agreements and disagreements to bring life to content.

Leaving Kinkaid,I had reached the point where students that I had taught were adults in the world. At times I would hear a cry, “Mrs. Smith? I’m Tom (or whomever)” The next sentence was nearly always, “Do you remember when….?” The memory was some activity that taught an educational goal, but sideways. Presbyterian School filled my first retirement gap for five years.

Then in the summer of 2011, I went to work with a former principal to develop a Middle School Grades 6 – 8 to round out a preschool that existed for neighborhood poverty level families. Five of us spent the summer scrounging for ideas and teaching materials and even lockers. I planned an English curriculum and arranged for field trips. By our efforts some children developed scholastic skills, some grew in a safe social situation, some came for help about family problems that I had no idea existed.

Ten years later after going through growing pains and graduating a first 8th grade, a public charter school has taken over our small efforts. Nine students have been guided to learn content and character traits before graduation this year. They all had plans for a high school next year and even a maybe thought for college. I met again with co-workers who were part of the collegiality dreaming time – a number one reason that validates my teaching, and then reason number 2. A 24 year old brought her little girl to me and said, “Mrs. Smith, do you remember when…”

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6