Teaching: It is more than Summer's Off

Hello..
I am attaching the speech I was asked to write for the Teacher Education Institute at SUNY at Buffalo. I was the commencement speaker, and I had a chance to think about what teaching means to me....it is an amazing profession with many ups and downs...Here is the speech:

I am truly honored and humbled to be standing here today to offer my sincere congratulations to each of you for accomplishing the rigorous and often emotional path to becoming an educator. You have all entered the society of teachers, one that requires true dedication, passion, patience and of course, some inspiration. Throughout the past year, I am sure you have been amazed at the students you have met, tackled challenging course work, reflected and reflected on your practice, visited many schools in this area often being reminded of the great divide of resources that exists between districts, you have cultivated lesson plans, restructured lesson plans and perhaps even changed them on the fly, you have communicated with parents, learned what it is like to operate your life on a bell schedule, experienced the often complex dynamics of the faculty room, learned to fix large copy machines as if you were born Xeroxing, pushed the limits of your creativity to engage your students, felt old for the first time as you realize that you aren’t that familiar with the music your students listen to, walked the line of balancing family, school and work obligations, you have probably even started to be recognized at Wegmans or other local places of commerce as students are amazed that you do actually leave the classroom, but most of all you have started to craft your teaching identity, something that will evolve with you throughout your teaching career, a new part of what makes you unique and integral to this world.

I still remember my first day student teaching in Jim Cercone’s classroom, which was an intimidating position to be in since he is such an amazing teacher. It actually began the night before when I could not sleep. I was running my lesson plans through my head over and over and over again as I am sure you have all experienced.(five years later, I still do this, five years later, I still do not sleep the night before the first day of school) The next day, I arrived at Cheektowaga Central on pure adrenaline, clutching a Sherman Alexie short story. I will never forget the bell ringing for the first time, as I stood in front of 24 seniors in high school, and I was utterly terrified. They all looked at me, I looked back and then we began. We read the story, and the students wrote, and the discussion started. It was not easy, it wasn’t completely smooth, but I was hooked. I hope you all are sitting here proud of accomplishing student teaching, it is no easy task, but most of all I hope that you are sitting here feeling hooked, feeling curious about what is out there for you and the teaching world, feeling excited about where your first job will take you.

When I was asked to talk to you a few months ago, I started to look back on the last five years of my life. I thought about the person I was at the beginning of TEI, and I realized that the person has changed. I see the world through a teacher’s eyes and I am constantly thinking about how to bring in what is going on out there into my classroom. In the past five years I have worked at two different school districts, and I have taught over 500 hundred students. Being an English teacher, I have always been drawn to stories. Tim O’Brien, a favorite author of mine, once said “Stories are for joining the past to the future, stories are for those late hours when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are.” When I think about teaching, I think of my stories and they are something that has helped me sustain my energy and allowed me to connect what we do as educators to the larger depths of what it means to be human. I could tell you about the time during a discussion about JD Salinger’s iconic Holden Caufield from The Catcher in the Rye, a character I grew up identifying with, a student introduced the idea that Holden just didn’t get it, Holden had all of these opportunities through education, wealth, and a family that loves him, this student thought he was perhaps spoiled and narcissistic to focus simply on what is wrong with other people without even understanding their story. Since that discussion, my own reading of that book has changed, and in that instant, my own perspective was altered as an eleventh grader wisely understood what it means to recognize certain privileges. I could tell you about the time a student I had for two years and was able to get to know quite well through a girl’s group I worked with lost her mother to a long battle with AIDS. I attended the funeral and was able to meet her sister who was the same age as I was, 27 years old, and was now raising her three siblings and working full time, balancing it all quite gracefully. I could tell you about the time students were working on their dramatic performances during our study of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, and in the midst of intense drama with memorized lines and all, a gigantic bee flew in the room ending in a class debate on whether the bee should live or just be stamped out by one of the students shoes, and I could even tell you about this time last year when I was sitting somewhat exhausted after a long day when I received an email from a former student, actually from my first year of teaching, that I thought hated me and my class. In the letter he thanked me for helping him believe in himself and it was my class that he actually first saw himself as a writer. He is now working on his master’s degree in fine arts at Ithaca College and working as a freelance writer. I have my difficult stories to, you are all entering a profession that is truly like no other. There will be days when kids are being kids, when your colleagues may see things quite differently than you, days when the pressures of high stakes testing take hold of a school, or when you realize that the system of education may need some major changes, but I am asking you now to think of your stories, write them down, etch them in your memory because there will be moments when you need them, where you may need to refocus, and your stories will always help you remember.

I also wanted to take a few moments to thank you for becoming teachers. Someone once told me that there is a special importance in the first poster you hang in your classroom, and in mine, there is a poster with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” My gratitude is to each of you for taking up a profession that is intrinsically linked to the progress of society. We are living in a very complex world, and our community and country for that matter are both facing immense challenges. Each of you holds the ability to help students learn to think about this world whether it is through math, science, music, English, art, foreign language, or history; the power to help students shape their lives, and hopefully develop the tools to make sense of their own paths, to believe that they too can accomplish their largest dreams no matter where they come from, what neighborhood they live in or what school they attend. It is you that can provide a learning environment that brings back the wonder that we all possess as children, a place that our students can learn to understand and appreciate our differences, a place where students can find their own independence through education and perhaps they too will be filled with the willingness to make a difference. In five years, with approximately 120 new teachers graduating this year from TEI, this room will have taught roughly 66,000 students. Imagine all of the possibilities.

So welcome to each of you. As the summer ends and the fall leaves start to arrive, I will be thinking of you as we all prepare for the new school year. I wish for each of you the fulfillment I have found in teaching, it is a calling, and it will enrich your lives. I always thought growing up that a teacher simply influences his or her students, but I have realized that it is also the students that profoundly educate and influence the teachers. I imagine it as one gigantic circle, all of us together, our own teachers and mentors, students, parents, communities, working together to make change and support the next generation, each group invested in the other. Enjoy every moment, embrace them, the silly, the frustrating, the exhausting, the profound, and each fall we will all begin again. Best of luck to you always and congratulations!!