It’s purge time for those of us who work in the summer. Central office staff and educators in the school buildings use this short time before teacher trainings and other meetings start to clean up, throw away, and make shiny. Apparently, I haven’t used this opportunity in awhile. I’ve just touched lesson plan books from 1991, poetry from 1993, and overhead transparencies from I-don’t-even-know-when. If you’re a teacher just beginning in your career, you may not even know what a transparency is. Don’t worry. You don’t need to know. Just turn on your interactive white board and go to town!
Sifting through plans and student work from decades ago took me right back to standing in front of my classroom. I loved it then, and I remember it now so vividly that I believe I could grab an overhead projector and run in a classroom and discuss Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” with the best of them! But the truth is…I can’t. I’ve been out of the classroom since 2008, and although my title – “teacher-on-loan” – has the word “teacher” in it, every year that I’m not in front of kids I feel that word fade like Marty McFly’s family pictures in Back to the Future.
Not long ago, someone I admire very much, a big name in education worldwide, posed this question: “Can you still be a teacher leader if you’ve left the classroom?”
My mouth opened to scream, “Yes!” and to share the list of ways I feel that I still lead in my current position. I train teachers, I support beginning teachers and their mentors. How do those roles not fall under teacher leadership?
But before I could choose my words, he answered for me. “No,” he said. “You can’t.” I fell in a metaphorical heap as I agreed with him. “I feel like I’ve lost my teacher voice,” I whined. “I KNOW I’ve lost my credibility,” I continued.
As a classroom teacher, I myself sat in many a meeting where I watched a former teacher try to tell me how to teach. I remember thinking they didn’t “get it.” How could they? They weren’t looking at 30 seventh graders at crack:thirty. They could go to the bathroom on demand. They could eat lunch for more than 15 minutes without simultaneously refereeing food fights. They didn’t have to call the parents of <fill-in-the-blank-with-a-student’s-name> to articulate something that non-educators would have a problem understanding.
And now that person is me.
The truth is I spend my days now working to support and develop teachers who are still in the trenches. Sometimes I have to dig deep to remember the struggles; I don’t have to dig far at all to remember what I loved – the kids, the camaraderie, the shared goals and vision of an entire staff. And I use all those experiences to shape the work I do with others.
And for now that is enough.
But those overhead transparencies, with handwritten poetry scrawled on them, still sit in my file cabinet, calling me back to a time I cherish. Or calling me to a time to come, a time that’s back….but also…to the future.