Teachers find a way to teach long after they’ve retired
I met a retired educator this past weekend at a garage sale, of all places. We struck up a conversation about the good ’ol days when he served students and teachers as an administrator at a local school. He was gray-haired, with a beautiful, big smile, and his face lit up when he found out I was a teacher, too. His smile indicated something to me that was deeper than just his being a nice fella. It signified to me what happens when a longstanding teacher finally bids adieu to public education.
Geography changes.
That’s all. Locations shift. Surroundings adjust. Scenes change. What happens when a teacher retires is simply a remodeling of the classroom. Retired teachers find a new classroom and new pupils most anywhere, but the lessons are always the same – they just have a little less focus on equations and grammar and dates.
I think the most important lessons most teachers long to teach successfully to every single student are:
• How to be a better version of Self.
• How to spread positivity and compassion.
• How to speak with kindness and gentleness.
• How to make the world a better place.
• How to treat others with respect and acceptance.
These are lessons far more meaningful than anything found within a textbook and far more outstretching than any knowledge measured by a test or exam.
Teachers have a neat way of creating teachable moments anywhere, at any moment, at any stage in their educational career — because once a teacher, always a teacher. It’s embedded inside us. Etched into our hearts. Forever on the tip of our tongues.
Immediately, this retired educator looked for ways to teach in the spontaneous classroom of a garage sale. A box of arrowheads became a neat history lesson. A small pocket knife became a lesson in survival. And a tiny P-38 led to a lesson in economics. We chatted for a good bit, and when we parted, I felt like I had made a new friend.
Certainly, teachers belong to a special fraternity, with the only initiation being a 180-day stint in a public-school classroom. We may meet as total strangers, but the instant camaraderie remains for a lifetime, because the lessons connect us. The lessons that were born out of necessity bind us together. The lessons we closed our textbooks to teach link us. The lessons on life and love and hate and acceptance and strength forever attach us to something bigger than ourselves. And we recognize that.
I make jokes about having to survive another 11 years before I can hit the road in the RV permanently or sleep past 5 a.m. on a weekday or enjoy a Saturday without worrying about my kids. But when I think about retiring from teaching, I want to remember my new smiley friend I met at a garage sale. I want to recall the way he found a teachable moment even in the strangest setting … because Lord knows, I’ll never be able to give up teaching altogether. No teacher can.
I sure hope, though, that I am always astute to the classrooms and the students around me like he was. When I become a gray-headed retired English teacher, I pray I can find a lesson on friendliness in a cup of coffee at Starbucks or one on grace in the airport security line.
But the teaching of lessons like these certainly isn’t just reserved for educators with degrees. All of us can teach them.
So, welcome to the fraternity, my friends. Get to teachin’.
This story was originally published May 22, 2018 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Teachers find a way to teach long after they’ve retired."