This is the first fall in 21
years that I do not find myself frantically preparing for yet another fall term
of teaching undergraduates. It is an odd sensation as I watch the ads for “Back
to School” and see the photos on Facebook from the parents of students of all
ages headed into their fall semesters knowing that I will not be joining them
in the mad scramble to begin another school year.
Teacher Grandparents named Reed and Wright
Sometimes it’s hard to keep
track of my teaching career. Altogether, I have been a teacher for 33 years at
four different schools and six different colleges with students ranging from
fifth graders to Ph.D. candidates. I’ve also been just as happy to be on the
other side of the lectern, having spent 31 years of my life as a student, 17 of
them in higher education. With great grandparents named Reed and Wright, I
always assumed teaching and learning were genetically encoded into me. In fact,
I am the fourth generation of educators in my family, the second generation of
college educators.
Clearly, I have always loved
school. Since fall of 1958 when I entered kindergarten, I have approached each
fall with joy, knowing another round of school was just ahead. I actually began
first grade on my birthday, September 1, 1959. Naively, I assumed that school
always began on my birthday and thus celebrated each new school year along with
my birthday. Now, with my 62d anniversary of that birth approaching next week,
I find myself at home watching the school bus go by and knowing I will not be
boarding.
It is often sad to see a
chapter of your life close. Much of my
identity has come from my teaching over the years. The three major passions of
my life have always been education, spirituality and justice. I have tried my
hand at each one professionally over my nearly 62 years and I am hoping to find
a way to bring all three together in my life post-retirement. But of the three,
it has always been teaching which has been my deepest passion.
This fall, I will miss the
students who came to office hours alternatively to chew the fat or, upon
occasion, to deal with existential crises. I will miss conversations with
colleagues whose chosen areas of study inevitably sent me scurrying off to
research the ideas they raised about which I knew little or nothing previously.
I will miss the very fine people on staff at the departments where I worked
whose hard work is often unacknowledged but without which the departments could
not function. I will miss the excitement of a new school term and the faces of
new students to know.
But I will not miss expending
the inordinate amounts of time demanded by online credit hour facilitation and enduring
the endless obligatory hype about how classes which excuse their students from
being regularly present are somehow just as good if not superior to real
classes. I will not miss online students who have confused their classes with
Burger King, demanding to have it their way in terms of workload, grading and
feedback and more than willing to use their consumer reviews at the end of the
term to punish anyone who doesn’t play the ratings game. And I will not miss the nightmare of trying
to find pre-paid but never guaranteed parking on a jammed campus perpetually
under construction and periodically cordoned off when ESPN once again convinces
the university to become its means of production for Thursday night football.
I feel a once familiar
heaviness return as I write those last words. It reminds me of some of the
reasons I decided to take retirement at the earliest possible date. But as I
have noted previously, I really have no regrets about that decision even as I find
myself slightly melancholic at this new school year beginning without me.
No Time to Waste….
But my days on the other
side of the lectern are hardly finished. A new round of education looms for me this
fall. Next week I fly to Albuquerque for the first on-site session of The
Living School. I have committed myself to a two year program of study of
spirituality and change agency. The curriculum includes two week long on-site
sessions each year, fall and spring, with directed study and online discourse in
between.
Created by Franciscan writer
and teacher Richard Rohr and grounded in the Perennial Tradition articulated by
people like Joseph Campbell and Aldous Huxley, I am hoping that this program
will give me both wisdom and insight as to how the remaining years of my
productive life might be spent. I am
praying I will find work which can weave together my passions for education,
spirituality and justice. As I begin this next round of education, I have a
very strong sense that, just like my decision to close my practice of law,
uproot myself and fly off to Berkeley to attend seminary 25 years ago, major
change is coming to my life and nothing will be the same again. Let’s hope
these tectonic shifts prove as productive as the last round.
And so I watch the bus go by
and turn back to my reading for my new studies in between cooking tonight’s
supper, washing the laundry and cutting back the jungle threatening to swallow
up our home. It’s grown quite bold during my preoccupation with online classes,
search committees and other time consuming, soul draining activities over the
past couple of years.
Restoring some order to the
chaos of the jungle is, like a sacrament, the visible means of a larger and
much deeper healing process I have undertaken upon leaving the university so unexpectedly
on such a bitter-sweet note. I have given myself a year to lick my wounds, to rest,
and get my bearings. I am a strong believer that redemption of anything is
possible. I also know it sometimes comes at a steep price. Today I begin that
process.
Here’s hoping everyone has a
great fall.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew
Scriptures)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment