#memorablemomentsineducation #33: For those keeping track at home (i.e. no one), I missed a post last week. Since this is the beginning of fall break, there’ll be no more posts this week. Then you’ll have a reprieve as I transition all these moments to my blog instead.
One of my work spouses got married last night, so in honor of his official nuptials I thought it appropriate to remember why and how we teachers need a good support network!
Over the years I’ve had many work “significant others,” and whether it be a same-sex marriage or a heterosexual union, those relationships have provided the emotional, professional, and intellectual succor I’ve needed to be a teacher. Just like at home where it’s essential my husband and I discuss and support one another as we figure out how to parent our own kids, teachers need that kind of unconditional care for one another to determine how best to meet the needs of our students.
Many of my work wives and husbands have coached with me, taught the same subject as I, or had the same students. Teaching can be fairly isolating work, often like standing on an island with just your volleyball Wilson to bounce ideas off of as the sharks circle and you wonder who or what might rescue you. To realize a friend down the hall knows the student you’re trying desperately to reach or a colleague has also attempted to teach 1984 to millennials who don’t recognize a world where personal privacy could be protected is to realize you are not alone. While it’s always rewarding to feel you, and you alone, can create a rich environment where students thrive under your tutelage and care, it can be equally rewarding to know there are others who do the same, who feel the work as intensely as you do, and are willing to listen to you discuss it so as to spare the actual family at home who could care less.
While I’ve experienced a few separations over the years due to retirements and moves, I know we’re still tightly knit friends and colleagues. Thank you to all of them who’ve made it possible for me to leave much of my work at school and come home to a life with more energy and time where it matters most.