Teaching is in My Blood

Today is my first day of school.

The history of the profession of Education is ironic to me. On the one hand, it is so crucial for the future; and yet on the other hand, it is so steeped in the past. Each generation laments the next and the battle cry of “Back to Basics” is too often heard. We are in such a hurry for change, that when it comes we reject it, shun it, and end up where we started. Or do we? Is it a circle or a spiral? I think it is a spiral.

My grandfather with my grandmother and my mother.

When I was in elementary school, my grandfather sent my letters back to me corrected and with comments about my penmanship. Our correspondence took place after he had retired, so I became his project and he complained bitterly about how education had slipped as my letters to him symbolized the demise of education as he knew and loved it. When I was in junior high and had a day off from school, I would go with my mom to her school and help her by running the mimeograph machine. She’d type up tests, quizzes, lessons on a manual typewriter onto a purple backed mimeograph stencil. While she was conferencing with her scholars, I would take each stencil and attach it to the drum of the mimeograph without getting my fingers caught in the jaws, add some intoxicating fluid to the reservoir, add paper to the feeder, and begin cranking the handle that activated the paper feeder that turned the drum to the melodious drone of the machine spitting out damp copies at the other end. I was a mess at the end of the process and probably a little bit high from the fumes of the fluid used to make the copies. My mom sounded like my grandfather when she drove us home.

Later after my first decade of teaching and just beginning to use computers in my classroom, I was doing my Masters work at the college where my dad taught. I was able to use his office as mine when I went over to school. He only had an electronic typewriter and access to a copy machine to make copies for his students. He also had boxes of Blue books in the corner, the standard form of recording student work in college. Students were always sitting in chairs outside my dad’s office waiting his arrival, which usually happened when I left for class. When I returned to fetch my dad for dinner, I would have to wait for a conference to end. During dinner my father oftentimes sounded my grandfather’s lament.

My second daughter with my father.

A little more than twenty years later, I was able to join my second daughter, at the end of her first year of teaching in her classroom as she was doing digital portfolio assessment with her scholars. When I entered her classroom, she had a projector and laptop set up and chairs arranged for the audience. The scholars came in, logged into their account and started their presentation which thematically showed their work, had links to their digital work, written commentary on their work, a video they had created, an occasional podcast, and a plethora of digital work including the email correspondence with their teacher. It was a multimedia extravaganza and the scholars were superb. They engaged the audience, answered the questions the audience posed about the work, and otherwise displayed great mastery of their own learning. When my daughter speaks of her scholars to me during the year, she sounds like my grandfather.

What I love about being a teacher is that we are never satisfied; we always want more from our scholars. We want them to be more than they think they can be and we do everything we are capable of doing to help them make this happen. The technology may have changed, but our passion as educators has not. I know I sound like my grandfather to my fourteen year old son when I correct his email or text messages to me.

Me with my first daughter the year I started teaching.

Four generations of teachers. We are interchangeable parts. Any one of us from any of the generations could step into the classroom of the other generation and function, except for the technology. What does that say about the profession of education? What does that say about our expectations for our educators?

As educators we are improving and growing. The common denominator is all of us is our passion. My grandfather had the same passion my daughters have. My daughters have grown to incorporate a new technology into their pedagogy, just as the generations before them had to do. Other differences have also emerged over these four generations. My daughters are more conscious of their pedagogy than my grandfather. For my daughters it is more of a profession than an avocation as it was for my grandfather. My daughters are aware of the multiple ways we learn, whereas for my grandfather there was really only one way to learn and teach. We aren’t returning to where we started as if in completing a circle, we are improving as in the image of creating a spiral that may even resemble the DNA strand.

As I prepare for the new school year, I am conscious of what I want to do and why I want to do it. I will review how I have done it before, what I have learned from others, and how I might do it better. I know I still have the passion to teach and I know when that goes so should I. I am reminded that even Socrates lamented the capabilities of the youth in his time and look how far we have come, but he never lost his passion to teach.

Teachers: My first born, me, my second born and the high schooler (renegade).