Stay Collegial: The Cures of Conversations & Community

I am now penning the 10th of the posts in this series on staying engaged and engaging as an aging teacher. For the first nine, I’d pulled ideas from my head and from a list that I’ve been keeping. All of this ruminant communication was in preparation for a conversation I was hosting at Educon 2024 at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy; which is, for those of you in teaching, perhaps the best conference you will ever attend if you’re looking for deep conversation instead of being a passive audience to the proselytes of pedagogy that show up at most conferences looking to convert you to the latest denomination of their particular church of education.

In this post I simply want to reflect on the conversation I helped facilitate among 16 fellow educators. The topic is in the photo above, and the conversation followed the pattern in the pdf linked below. (Click the caption for the full presentation as a pdf)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R7zdlTjV-nG6br_lWvZr4rjm5avpzT-U/view?

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how this conversatioun would go. I’d never run it before, but from what I’d gathered from peers, the internet, and my own existential rumblings, this was something people wanted to discuss. 

And while the attendance based upon those who had signed up was small, I was hoping people would gravitate my way as they realized, “Hey…this is actually something I’ve thought about” regardless of whether they were 30 years in, like me, or 10 years in (16 joined us!). In fact, teachers just starting out would have been perfect for this session as one of the issues we broached was how many of us, back when we were barely 10 years in, had realized, “I don’t know how I can keep this up.” 

Let’s face it. Teaching requires a level of emotional commitment that is unheard of in most occupations. Indeed, if you were to go back to the previous post in this series and look at the recommendations from current students on what they feel keeps an older teacher engaging and engaged, you’d realize that “establishing close relationships with students/connecting with students” is the number one response.

And sure, we know this. But there’s a toll to that. When we invest ourselves in the lives of others, we expend a psychic energy that requires more of us than we realize. Connecting with and investing in the lives and well being of others as teachers do is not just one of the most rewarding parts of the job…it is one of the most taxing. 

And while “Balance” seems such a cliche, it is the main requirement if we are to remain engaging and engaged at advanced age. Color me stupid. But this is the hardest part of the job and the most rewarding. How to balance our personal and professional lives. Is it even possible? I don’t know. Hence these posts…after 30 years.

But here’s what I do know. The teachers at Educon and the conversations we had made me hopeful. Knowing that others, long ago, felt the same way I did, that they thought the way I did…this gave me hope.  Hope for the students we have now and for the students to come. Just looking at some of their responses to our design challenge is encouraging, as is looking at the “Rooting in Joy” activity (see the trees), where we offered something in the classroom that brings us joy–joy being a source of sustaining energy and vitality.

Perhaps I’m overstating things and what I’m feeling is overblown. Or perhaps it is the fallout of “a calling.” We are who we are. And this…beautiful and flawed and tragic as it is, because it is all about the human… this is the life we are called to.