Getting HERE
Home-grown
Born and raised in Claymont, I proudly attended public schools. My summers were spent hanging out with friends in my development and irritating our neighbors. The latter we turned into an art form. Later, as we outgrew the confines of our "stadium" in the street, we would go to the school yard and play ball until dark....often coming home late for dinner, (and having to eat it cold,) a small sacrifice for hours of fun.
Claymont was a "tight" community. Families knew each other and helped raise each other's children. Neighborhood moms took turns supplying kool-aid and snacks or carting us off to 7-11 for Slurpees. We all shopped at the same grocery store, attended the same churches, and knew the names of all our neighbors, a huge advantage on Halloween. Most of the Claymont kids went to the public schools from Kindergarten to our senior year. Growing up together, we established very close bonds. Very few people moved out and when they did, it was usually very sad. That same "closeness" brought the "village" approach to teaching us right from wrong. We were just as likely to get yelled at by our neighbors and our friend's parents as our own mom and dad....and their word was given full faith and credit at our house. If a neighbor called and told my parents I was up to something, the parents followed through with consequences.
School was an extension of home and vice versa. Parents volunteered to help at school. PTA meetings were packed. In addition, teachers had the ultimate respect from parents. A call home from a teacher usually was the end of the world for the kid. I had my share as I was no angel. If that phone rang and it was the school, I was a dead man. In Fourth grade, I rarely saw the sun.
As a child, I walked to Darley Road Elementary School, then biked to Claymont Middle School. Claymont High School was also a short walk across the footbridge that spanned I-95. Almost everyone in the community did the same, except for the few who were shipped off to Catholic school. (We would see them at their bus stop dressed in the ties or skirts and usually point and laugh.)
Because most people walked, there were very few busses. The only time I ever got on a bus was for a field trip or a sporting event. Because we had so few "riders," the school rarely closed for snow. While the rest of the state schools might close, Claymont schools would open an hour late.....an extra hour to throw snowballs.
Closing Claymont High School, though financially necessary, was a tragic blow to our community. Talk to people today who lived in Claymont in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and they will tell you the town has changed quite a bit since the closing of the school. Losing the high school meant losing the link to our community as well as our "identity." On any given Saturday morning during Fall, hundreds of people from Claymont would go to the high school football game. The Claymont band held parades through the neighborhoods prior to Homecoming and on Memorial Day. There was always a buzz in the community about the sports team or the school musical. Many community events were centered around or held at the school. The school board in heir infinite wisdom, ripped the heart out of the community.
I cannot say enough about the teachers I had in the public school system. We were actually our own district (The Claymont Special School District). If you ask kids who went to school here they will give you a list of names of the teachers that made a difference in their lives. It is funny how the same names will appear on everyone's list. We were fortunate to have these educators.
Years after they closed Claymont High School, Green Street Elementary was demolished to make way for townhouses. Progress right? The Claymont Middle School, Old Main, which had survived a terrible fire, was later re-tooled to become a community center. In 2009, Darley Road, the last link to our neighborhood, was closed. The glue which had held the community together for so long was now dissolving. The tennis courts were abandoned, the baseball fields became overgrown with weeds, and the other places where we spent much of our childhood slowly slipped into decay.
My friends and family still live in Claymont and I still consider myself very much attached to the community. There are some plans to resurrect Claymont's downtown area. Downtown? We have a downtown? Actually the Philadelphia Pike area has been targeted and this is welcome news. So far, the progress has been promising.
I make no apologies for being a supporter of neighborhood schools. Nothing can supplant the important link that must exist between the community and the school. My entire childhood was framed by that link. It pains me today that kids do not get to walk to their schools. Sure, there are strong reasons for having schools that house important programs. There is also the "money" issue that makes it impractical to stock every school with specialized equipment for unique programs. What I know is that having neighborhoods tied directly into the schools provided a fantastic experience for me.
13th Grade
Upon graduating from Claymont, I traded in my Purple and Gold for Blue and Gold by attending the University of Delaware. My parents worked very hard to provide me with the possibility of being the first in our family to attend college. My father put in 3 decades at the Westinghouse factory across the border in Pennsylvania taking on crazy shift work to provide for our family. Most of the days during the week I rarely saw him as his work was often beginning when my school day was ending. My mother went back to work as I got older, to stash away funds for my sister and I to further our education beyond high school. My parents, and their generation, were all about sacrificing for family, community, and country. I was to be the first generation in my family to attend college thanks to the efforts of my parents.
Like many who entered college, I had one thing in mind for a career and changed along the way. I was a Chemistry and Criminal Justice Major after becoming fond of science at Claymont High. The science program at Claymont High School was excellent. However, late-evening and early-morning 4-hour chemistry labs in college kept me from keeping up my grades in other subjects. I was getting an A in Chem, but struggling elsewhere.
After a year as a Chem major, I switched into a "pre-Law" program. This was interesting but throughout this time, I felt something was missing. Maybe law wasn't what I was really destined to do. In my senior year, I opted to hang around for more credits to get a teaching certificate, passing on entrance in Law School. Eventually, I earned a double degree in both Political Science Education and History Education.
College was an experience for which I was not well prepared. Sure, I had decent grades and skills from high school, but I wasn't ready for the tremendous freedom that went with it as well as the growing personal responsibility college life demands. It took several weeks just to get used to the idea of living in a dorm. However, I met some fantastic people there and made some life-long friends. College life is filled with a wealth of experiences. Most of what you learn in not in a textbook, but they are life-lessons that help define who you are.
The Real World
My last semester at college was actually spent at Wilmington Friends School getting my classroom experience as a student teacher. At Friends, I had the very good fortune of training under a dynamic talented social studies teacher named Rick Reynolds. Rick recently retired after 40 years at Wilmington Friends. In fact, the entire social studies department there was staffed with gifted educators....just as it was at Claymont. They all made Wilmington Friends their career and their home. To this day, I still use tips I got from this experience. I was even fortunate enough to help design a course of instruction that is till used at Friends today. By this time, I was convinced teaching was the field for me. Law school would have to wait. The world would survive with one less lawyer anyway.
Trying to land a teaching job in the early 80s was not easy. Public school districts were cutting back on staff. I took a job at a small, up-and-coming private school named "Independence" in the Fall of 1982. Our school was in a shopping center. The next year, the school expanded to a new facility in Newark. I worked there for 12 years and in that time, witnessed the school's growth into an established academic powerhouse. Independence provided me with an opportunity to work with many skilled and dedicated educators and dynamic students that have left a life-long impression on me.
The students I taught were enthusiastic about learning. Graduations were usually emotionally painful because we didn't want to see the students go. When the time came for me to move on, it was hard to leave these students. Even today, the experiences of working with these students, who are now well out of their college and into the workforce, still brings me smiles. To see them now as adults with families and successful lives is very gratifying. This was a special group of kids who we felt then, were destined to make an impact on their generation and they have not disappointed.
It was during this period in my life that I met my wife, Mary Joan and we started a family. My son Thomas was born a year after I got married.
The Journey Home
In the summer of 1994, I got a call from one of my former teachers who was now principal at the newly re-opened Springer Middle School. There was a social studies vacancy. This was an opportunity I had to take. Being able to work for and with some of my former teachers was an energizing experience. I was not about to let them down.
Springer was in the Brandywine School District. The Claymont Special School district had been absorbed into this new district which also included the remnants of the Alfred I DuPont School district. Springer was re-opened as middle school to take on growing enrollment in the district.
The shift from private to public education was a challenge. Many things had changed since I went to public school. Those two years I spent at Springer taught me more about education than all I had learned up until that time. When attendance patterns in the district shifted, I transferred to Hanby Middle School.
The Hanby Way
Hanby was a unique place in which to work. I served under three principals there and even though each possessed a slightly different management style, their goal was the same: to do what is best for the kids.
Much of my time there I spent trying to bring to Hanby, some of the positive experiences I was fortunate to have as a student. In that time, I was lucky to have administrators and parents encourage and support me along the way. The best part of being at Hanby was working with educators who share the same passion for working with youth. Hanby was considered to be the finest Middle School in the district and one of the best in the state.
Oh No Not Again....
In 2008, after several months of debate, the school district decide it was prudent to close Hanby Middle School because of shrinking, district-wide enrollment. Though Hanby's numbers were always high because so many kids choiced to our school, the district targeted our school for closing. It all came down to a numbers crunch and we ended up on the short end of political end-fighting, despite a long and desperate struggle to keep Hanby open. The Hanby staff did not go down without a fight. We worked very hard to keep our school open but the politicians who ran out district had already made up their minds. It was a exercise I futility and as it turned out, a decision based on flawed statistical analysis.....something we warned them about before they closed us.
Now, there was a new challenge. I was assigned to a newly rennovated school and the district schools have now reconfigured into a 6-8 format for middle school. Having gone through these "changes" before, I was somewhat uneasy about the results....the school board closed a great school with a fine reputation.
Future Shock
The changes that have taken place in the district over the last 12 months are more than the last 30 years....I wonder if Toffler's premonition (from his best selling book Future Shock,) will apply here?
I too had some major changes. I went back to school on an advanced degree. On the first day of grad class, I arrived first and sat in the front row. Immediately I had a fellow student 20 years younger than I ask me " is there was going to be a final exam in this course?" I had to tell her I was a student, not the professor. (The professor was only 10 years younger th
an me.)
As we enter each school year, there are hopes to transform PS duPont into a Middle School which will be the envy of the state. We have the staff in place to make history. My Hanby colleagues were all transferred here. If the administration will let these former "Mustangs" run free, we will have a fantastic program.
Familiar Ground
In 2010, PS duPont offered me the opportunity to work again in a realm where I started my career: teaching the gifted and talented student. At Independence, back in the 80s, stringent admissions testing was in place which presented me with students who would have been labeled "gifted." Since that decade, the process of identifying gifted students has been expanded.
Our district decided to move our gifted and talented program into the middle school and when teachers were needed, I jumped at the opportunity.
Several university courses and many years of experience at Independence has given me the tools to create a rigorous curriculum for my students. I look forward to working in this program for many years. The staff with whom I work is an exceptional bunch.
Raising the bar
There is no question that the opportunity we have created for kids here at PS is phenomenal. We have kids leave us in 8th grade only to tell us they learned a great deal here, and are meeting with success here because they are so well prepared. That is a nice compliment. Yet at the same time, I get the sense that for me and the other teachers in the program, there is still more to achieve. We set higher goals for ourselves just as we do for our students. We all want the next year to be better than this one.
Storm clouds
For the umpteenth time in my career, there is a new thought, idea, or program change being proposed in education. I treat each of these with some degree of skepticism, mainly because I have seem so many these initiatives come and go. I am not alone here as other educators have been through all the initiatives, fads or whatever you with to call them and I am trying to keep an open mind. Surely if all doctors scoffed at new innovations in medicine, we would still be using leaches to treat patients....but those discoveries are grounded in research by experts in the medical field and justified with countless trials.
Yet in education, everyone seems to be an expert and everyone claims to have a bag of magic beans. If all new ideas in education were summarily dismissed, our students would still be using an abacus. Still, I believe good teaching practices survive the test of time...no matter what name you give them. Many of these "new initiatives" are simply solid practices done for years that now have a new name or acronym.
In time, these new initiatives will be replaced by even newer ones. Someone (not me) will make a boat-load of money selling books or resources convincing politicians to dump tons of money into these new ventures. Some of these changes will work, but none can alter or replace the fundamental role of the teacher. Is there room for "old school" thinking in a new millennium?
What's next?
Many educators can tell you exactly how many years they will continue to work. I cannot picture the mindset of setting a "date." To each his own I guess. I am not trying to be judgmental, I just don't see myself walking away from what I like doing anytime soon.
Some parents with children in elementary school asking me "if I will be around when there kid gets to middle school." I have always interpreted this as sort of a compliment, but then again..... I tell them I have no plans to get hit by a bus anytime soon, but life doesn't always work out the way you planned. Right now, I am just enjoying everyday I get to go and do what I love doing.
There are still a great many things I want to do in the classroom . Over the years, there have been some seismic shifts to the educational landscape, but some of the mainstays of my class still stand. We still "play" Discovery and close each school year with a trip to Boston. Recently, some alums have joined me on that trip. some bringing their own children. Former students talk about these and other things they did in my classes decades afterwards. I have had a fortunate career with fantastic role models to thank for helping me steer my own course.
Full Circle
In October 2017, I attended my 40th high school reunion. To me, the event was more than just a banquet and a good time. Our class advisor, Mr. Jack Powell (see professional giants) gave a very passionate speech about who we were as a class and how our class defined him over the years. I kept the video of the speech and hope to transcribe it so I can read it from time to time when I lose my way about what is really important in the world.
My high school class is full of great people who have taken into every walk of life. There are sub-plots in each life and I listened to as many as I could to realize that we as a class, have fulfilled the dreams of our parents and the hopes of our teachers. Countless members of my class devoted their lives to teaching, volunteer work, medical research, and other endeavors to improve the lives of others all the while balancing careers with the demands of parenthood and now grandparenthood.
We first learn from our parents. Then, our teachers take up the task, but all along we are learning from each other. I fortunate to have so many people in my life who have helped me to become what I am.
Born and raised in Claymont, I proudly attended public schools. My summers were spent hanging out with friends in my development and irritating our neighbors. The latter we turned into an art form. Later, as we outgrew the confines of our "stadium" in the street, we would go to the school yard and play ball until dark....often coming home late for dinner, (and having to eat it cold,) a small sacrifice for hours of fun.
Claymont was a "tight" community. Families knew each other and helped raise each other's children. Neighborhood moms took turns supplying kool-aid and snacks or carting us off to 7-11 for Slurpees. We all shopped at the same grocery store, attended the same churches, and knew the names of all our neighbors, a huge advantage on Halloween. Most of the Claymont kids went to the public schools from Kindergarten to our senior year. Growing up together, we established very close bonds. Very few people moved out and when they did, it was usually very sad. That same "closeness" brought the "village" approach to teaching us right from wrong. We were just as likely to get yelled at by our neighbors and our friend's parents as our own mom and dad....and their word was given full faith and credit at our house. If a neighbor called and told my parents I was up to something, the parents followed through with consequences.
School was an extension of home and vice versa. Parents volunteered to help at school. PTA meetings were packed. In addition, teachers had the ultimate respect from parents. A call home from a teacher usually was the end of the world for the kid. I had my share as I was no angel. If that phone rang and it was the school, I was a dead man. In Fourth grade, I rarely saw the sun.
As a child, I walked to Darley Road Elementary School, then biked to Claymont Middle School. Claymont High School was also a short walk across the footbridge that spanned I-95. Almost everyone in the community did the same, except for the few who were shipped off to Catholic school. (We would see them at their bus stop dressed in the ties or skirts and usually point and laugh.)
Because most people walked, there were very few busses. The only time I ever got on a bus was for a field trip or a sporting event. Because we had so few "riders," the school rarely closed for snow. While the rest of the state schools might close, Claymont schools would open an hour late.....an extra hour to throw snowballs.
Closing Claymont High School, though financially necessary, was a tragic blow to our community. Talk to people today who lived in Claymont in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and they will tell you the town has changed quite a bit since the closing of the school. Losing the high school meant losing the link to our community as well as our "identity." On any given Saturday morning during Fall, hundreds of people from Claymont would go to the high school football game. The Claymont band held parades through the neighborhoods prior to Homecoming and on Memorial Day. There was always a buzz in the community about the sports team or the school musical. Many community events were centered around or held at the school. The school board in heir infinite wisdom, ripped the heart out of the community.
I cannot say enough about the teachers I had in the public school system. We were actually our own district (The Claymont Special School District). If you ask kids who went to school here they will give you a list of names of the teachers that made a difference in their lives. It is funny how the same names will appear on everyone's list. We were fortunate to have these educators.
Years after they closed Claymont High School, Green Street Elementary was demolished to make way for townhouses. Progress right? The Claymont Middle School, Old Main, which had survived a terrible fire, was later re-tooled to become a community center. In 2009, Darley Road, the last link to our neighborhood, was closed. The glue which had held the community together for so long was now dissolving. The tennis courts were abandoned, the baseball fields became overgrown with weeds, and the other places where we spent much of our childhood slowly slipped into decay.
My friends and family still live in Claymont and I still consider myself very much attached to the community. There are some plans to resurrect Claymont's downtown area. Downtown? We have a downtown? Actually the Philadelphia Pike area has been targeted and this is welcome news. So far, the progress has been promising.
I make no apologies for being a supporter of neighborhood schools. Nothing can supplant the important link that must exist between the community and the school. My entire childhood was framed by that link. It pains me today that kids do not get to walk to their schools. Sure, there are strong reasons for having schools that house important programs. There is also the "money" issue that makes it impractical to stock every school with specialized equipment for unique programs. What I know is that having neighborhoods tied directly into the schools provided a fantastic experience for me.
13th Grade
Upon graduating from Claymont, I traded in my Purple and Gold for Blue and Gold by attending the University of Delaware. My parents worked very hard to provide me with the possibility of being the first in our family to attend college. My father put in 3 decades at the Westinghouse factory across the border in Pennsylvania taking on crazy shift work to provide for our family. Most of the days during the week I rarely saw him as his work was often beginning when my school day was ending. My mother went back to work as I got older, to stash away funds for my sister and I to further our education beyond high school. My parents, and their generation, were all about sacrificing for family, community, and country. I was to be the first generation in my family to attend college thanks to the efforts of my parents.
Like many who entered college, I had one thing in mind for a career and changed along the way. I was a Chemistry and Criminal Justice Major after becoming fond of science at Claymont High. The science program at Claymont High School was excellent. However, late-evening and early-morning 4-hour chemistry labs in college kept me from keeping up my grades in other subjects. I was getting an A in Chem, but struggling elsewhere.
After a year as a Chem major, I switched into a "pre-Law" program. This was interesting but throughout this time, I felt something was missing. Maybe law wasn't what I was really destined to do. In my senior year, I opted to hang around for more credits to get a teaching certificate, passing on entrance in Law School. Eventually, I earned a double degree in both Political Science Education and History Education.
College was an experience for which I was not well prepared. Sure, I had decent grades and skills from high school, but I wasn't ready for the tremendous freedom that went with it as well as the growing personal responsibility college life demands. It took several weeks just to get used to the idea of living in a dorm. However, I met some fantastic people there and made some life-long friends. College life is filled with a wealth of experiences. Most of what you learn in not in a textbook, but they are life-lessons that help define who you are.
The Real World
My last semester at college was actually spent at Wilmington Friends School getting my classroom experience as a student teacher. At Friends, I had the very good fortune of training under a dynamic talented social studies teacher named Rick Reynolds. Rick recently retired after 40 years at Wilmington Friends. In fact, the entire social studies department there was staffed with gifted educators....just as it was at Claymont. They all made Wilmington Friends their career and their home. To this day, I still use tips I got from this experience. I was even fortunate enough to help design a course of instruction that is till used at Friends today. By this time, I was convinced teaching was the field for me. Law school would have to wait. The world would survive with one less lawyer anyway.
Trying to land a teaching job in the early 80s was not easy. Public school districts were cutting back on staff. I took a job at a small, up-and-coming private school named "Independence" in the Fall of 1982. Our school was in a shopping center. The next year, the school expanded to a new facility in Newark. I worked there for 12 years and in that time, witnessed the school's growth into an established academic powerhouse. Independence provided me with an opportunity to work with many skilled and dedicated educators and dynamic students that have left a life-long impression on me.
The students I taught were enthusiastic about learning. Graduations were usually emotionally painful because we didn't want to see the students go. When the time came for me to move on, it was hard to leave these students. Even today, the experiences of working with these students, who are now well out of their college and into the workforce, still brings me smiles. To see them now as adults with families and successful lives is very gratifying. This was a special group of kids who we felt then, were destined to make an impact on their generation and they have not disappointed.
It was during this period in my life that I met my wife, Mary Joan and we started a family. My son Thomas was born a year after I got married.
The Journey Home
In the summer of 1994, I got a call from one of my former teachers who was now principal at the newly re-opened Springer Middle School. There was a social studies vacancy. This was an opportunity I had to take. Being able to work for and with some of my former teachers was an energizing experience. I was not about to let them down.
Springer was in the Brandywine School District. The Claymont Special School district had been absorbed into this new district which also included the remnants of the Alfred I DuPont School district. Springer was re-opened as middle school to take on growing enrollment in the district.
The shift from private to public education was a challenge. Many things had changed since I went to public school. Those two years I spent at Springer taught me more about education than all I had learned up until that time. When attendance patterns in the district shifted, I transferred to Hanby Middle School.
The Hanby Way
Hanby was a unique place in which to work. I served under three principals there and even though each possessed a slightly different management style, their goal was the same: to do what is best for the kids.
Much of my time there I spent trying to bring to Hanby, some of the positive experiences I was fortunate to have as a student. In that time, I was lucky to have administrators and parents encourage and support me along the way. The best part of being at Hanby was working with educators who share the same passion for working with youth. Hanby was considered to be the finest Middle School in the district and one of the best in the state.
Oh No Not Again....
In 2008, after several months of debate, the school district decide it was prudent to close Hanby Middle School because of shrinking, district-wide enrollment. Though Hanby's numbers were always high because so many kids choiced to our school, the district targeted our school for closing. It all came down to a numbers crunch and we ended up on the short end of political end-fighting, despite a long and desperate struggle to keep Hanby open. The Hanby staff did not go down without a fight. We worked very hard to keep our school open but the politicians who ran out district had already made up their minds. It was a exercise I futility and as it turned out, a decision based on flawed statistical analysis.....something we warned them about before they closed us.
Now, there was a new challenge. I was assigned to a newly rennovated school and the district schools have now reconfigured into a 6-8 format for middle school. Having gone through these "changes" before, I was somewhat uneasy about the results....the school board closed a great school with a fine reputation.
Future Shock
The changes that have taken place in the district over the last 12 months are more than the last 30 years....I wonder if Toffler's premonition (from his best selling book Future Shock,) will apply here?
I too had some major changes. I went back to school on an advanced degree. On the first day of grad class, I arrived first and sat in the front row. Immediately I had a fellow student 20 years younger than I ask me " is there was going to be a final exam in this course?" I had to tell her I was a student, not the professor. (The professor was only 10 years younger th
an me.)
As we enter each school year, there are hopes to transform PS duPont into a Middle School which will be the envy of the state. We have the staff in place to make history. My Hanby colleagues were all transferred here. If the administration will let these former "Mustangs" run free, we will have a fantastic program.
Familiar Ground
In 2010, PS duPont offered me the opportunity to work again in a realm where I started my career: teaching the gifted and talented student. At Independence, back in the 80s, stringent admissions testing was in place which presented me with students who would have been labeled "gifted." Since that decade, the process of identifying gifted students has been expanded.
Our district decided to move our gifted and talented program into the middle school and when teachers were needed, I jumped at the opportunity.
Several university courses and many years of experience at Independence has given me the tools to create a rigorous curriculum for my students. I look forward to working in this program for many years. The staff with whom I work is an exceptional bunch.
Raising the bar
There is no question that the opportunity we have created for kids here at PS is phenomenal. We have kids leave us in 8th grade only to tell us they learned a great deal here, and are meeting with success here because they are so well prepared. That is a nice compliment. Yet at the same time, I get the sense that for me and the other teachers in the program, there is still more to achieve. We set higher goals for ourselves just as we do for our students. We all want the next year to be better than this one.
Storm clouds
For the umpteenth time in my career, there is a new thought, idea, or program change being proposed in education. I treat each of these with some degree of skepticism, mainly because I have seem so many these initiatives come and go. I am not alone here as other educators have been through all the initiatives, fads or whatever you with to call them and I am trying to keep an open mind. Surely if all doctors scoffed at new innovations in medicine, we would still be using leaches to treat patients....but those discoveries are grounded in research by experts in the medical field and justified with countless trials.
Yet in education, everyone seems to be an expert and everyone claims to have a bag of magic beans. If all new ideas in education were summarily dismissed, our students would still be using an abacus. Still, I believe good teaching practices survive the test of time...no matter what name you give them. Many of these "new initiatives" are simply solid practices done for years that now have a new name or acronym.
In time, these new initiatives will be replaced by even newer ones. Someone (not me) will make a boat-load of money selling books or resources convincing politicians to dump tons of money into these new ventures. Some of these changes will work, but none can alter or replace the fundamental role of the teacher. Is there room for "old school" thinking in a new millennium?
What's next?
Many educators can tell you exactly how many years they will continue to work. I cannot picture the mindset of setting a "date." To each his own I guess. I am not trying to be judgmental, I just don't see myself walking away from what I like doing anytime soon.
Some parents with children in elementary school asking me "if I will be around when there kid gets to middle school." I have always interpreted this as sort of a compliment, but then again..... I tell them I have no plans to get hit by a bus anytime soon, but life doesn't always work out the way you planned. Right now, I am just enjoying everyday I get to go and do what I love doing.
There are still a great many things I want to do in the classroom . Over the years, there have been some seismic shifts to the educational landscape, but some of the mainstays of my class still stand. We still "play" Discovery and close each school year with a trip to Boston. Recently, some alums have joined me on that trip. some bringing their own children. Former students talk about these and other things they did in my classes decades afterwards. I have had a fortunate career with fantastic role models to thank for helping me steer my own course.
Full Circle
In October 2017, I attended my 40th high school reunion. To me, the event was more than just a banquet and a good time. Our class advisor, Mr. Jack Powell (see professional giants) gave a very passionate speech about who we were as a class and how our class defined him over the years. I kept the video of the speech and hope to transcribe it so I can read it from time to time when I lose my way about what is really important in the world.
My high school class is full of great people who have taken into every walk of life. There are sub-plots in each life and I listened to as many as I could to realize that we as a class, have fulfilled the dreams of our parents and the hopes of our teachers. Countless members of my class devoted their lives to teaching, volunteer work, medical research, and other endeavors to improve the lives of others all the while balancing careers with the demands of parenthood and now grandparenthood.
We first learn from our parents. Then, our teachers take up the task, but all along we are learning from each other. I fortunate to have so many people in my life who have helped me to become what I am.