My Story

I am not a digital native. I was still using a typewriter throughout college, so, please be patient. I have recently retired from teaching language arts after 27 years in the classroom.

I have also recently moved from CT to the low country in South Carolina. These changes have offered me a new perspective on life, and a desire to share my writing and thoughts with the world. I want to be the phoenix rising from the ashes. I do not purport to know everything. As the adage, goes: I am the jack of all trades and the master of nothing. However, I have myriad, diverse experiences and stories to tell.

I contemplated how to start this blog, and lighted on sharing the reasons I left the classroom ten years before retirement, and well-short of the enticing full pension. To this end, below are excerpts from my retirement speech given to an audience of my colleagues.

If you are a teacher, I hope you find some truth and solace in these words. If you are not, I hope this provides some fodder for contemplation and understanding

The Speech

“I am at a loss for words.  Considering what I do, that is saying something.  Maybe, I am at a loss for the right words.  Maybe, I just know that words are inadequate during a process of change, of letting go.   What I do know is that like my emotions and my belongings, my thoughts are strewn about in my mercurial brain.   I will do my best to harness them by discussing the three G’s.  Two of them come from our mission statement, “Grace and Grit.”

The third, Gratitude, is evoked by all of you.   

I’m tired.   Teaching is exhausting.   Even teaching a half-day wears me out.   I struggle with the rigidity of the school calendar, the constant need to be somewhere on time, and the bells, the bells, the bells.   I have never been more worn out than on a Friday afternoon during a full-week in March. My one saving grace is that early in my career, I made a vow to myself to never correct or plan on Friday nights.   A vow I’ve stuck too.  Borrow it. It helps.   (You’re welcome.)

I’m tired.   Our profession is constantly demeaned overtly and covertly by those who don’t know.  By those who seemingly don’t care.   They want us to teach with passion and creativity, yet challenge our books, our methods, our words.  I am fatigued by filtering all my words through clenched, censoring teeth.

I’m tired. I’ve changed, but so have my students. They are more needy, yet seemingly less receptive.  They want to achieve, but want to do so with only just enough effort.  They would rather avoid than engage. They interact constantly on their phones, but are reluctant to share their poems, their ideas, their experiences with their classmates. Their passivity is often draining. 

Sorry. My English colleagues will tell you that I speak and write with sincerity and sass.  They will also tell you that I often use the common metaphor that we are in a battle.  Maybe, it comes from teaching Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried too often, but I am not alone in this sentiment. There is a helpful online resource called Teacher’s Trenches. I mention this because, like  O’Brien, who fought in Vietnam,  every battle and war has its ugliness, but it has its beauty as well.  

How good does it make you feel when you see the smile of recognition in a struggling student’s face?  How good does it feel when your lesson plan fails and the students learn more from the digression?  How good does it feel to see your students evolve and succeed?  Good enough.

Teaching is hard, but it is essential.  It is necessary. It is not a profession for the faint of heart. 

Our educational system has some flaws, but it also has us. We are gritty. We are broken, but unbowed.

I am broken, but unbowed because I am lifted up on the shoulders of those around me.

[Personal expressions of gratitude removed]

Lastly, I need to thank my fellow language arts teachers.  I will miss you the most, Scarecrow.   Here’s the thing.   You are an incredible group of educators, but you are much more than that.   You are my relief, my respite, my rejuvenation.  You are my why?  You have been there through all of my formation and failings, and I will miss your generous hearts, compelling conversations, and enduring friendship.  You are an integral part of my story.  You are also the protectors of story.  During a time, when words and books are under constant attack, we have to continue to champion expression, and empathy.  The aforementioned Tim O’Brien tells us that stories are for joining the past to the future, and the fabric of our existence.  They are our essence. He also says they can save us.  I truly believe that. So share our stories, all stories, and…let’s write some new ones.

[More Personal Thanks]

Finally, Thank you to my dearest Eileen. The peas to my carrots.  She has been with me for the last 10 years unwavering and wise.  Over this past winter break, she saw the spark waning in my eye, professionally and personally, and she said, It’s time.”  I am forever grateful for her love and for THAT sentence. 

It is time.   So I would like to make my exit with grace.  I have made a living. I hope I have made a difference.  Now, I want to make a life. With my family, with Eileen. I have been beckoned by the coastline and the slower pace of South Carolina.  By the shoals and the She-Crab soup.   I know I will work– a rolling stone gathers no moss-,but renting a villa is as far as I’ve planned.    South Carolina offers a change, and whether I am the Prince of Tides, or Forrest Gump,  I have already grown fond of Where the Crawdads Sing.  There, I hope to reinvent myself by being open to change, but never sacrificing the best parts of me. I also hope that the next time I hear bells, they will not signal a beginning or an ending but be an accompaniment to a celebration, or be purposefully ignored. 

I said I was at a loss for words, but that was a lie.”   But I am tired, as you probably are, so I will end with this.

Show grit, express gratitude, live with grace.   

Wishing you all (y’all)  fulfillment in your work and joy in your lives, and

Of course… love and laughter.

The rest is silence. “

 Craig