Time for Some June Thoughts
It's the end of a year for me, but the end of an era for others.
By this time next week, another school year will be in the books. After next Thursday morning’s graduation ceremony, it’ll officially be Summer Break for about four weeks. Starting in mid-July there’s a Summer School Master Teacher position followed by meeting with other Speech and Debate teachers, so the months’ time I’ll have to rest and recharge will be valued. As the year winds down, I realize that starting with my graduate school internship in 2008, I’m wrapping up my seventeenth year in the classroom. Wanting to play with numbers a bit, I realized that if I started teaching in the fall of 1982 (after my July birth), I’d now be prepping for my senior year of high school.
I’ve rehashed it in earlier writing, but if you’re new- know that a combination of being let go from a toxic corporate job and negative temperatures many years later led to this moment- wrapping up Year Nine with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Six years in middle school and now three years in high school have allowed me to meet a plethora of amazing teachers, students, administrators, and parents. Each and every one of them, in some way, have led me to being able to see my tenth year about to breach the distant horizon.
In the time I’ve been here, I’ve established myself, while being dumbfounded at the pace with which the past nine years have passed by. As the number of students I’ve taught in Charlotte nears one thousand, I can only hope that what I’ve done within the walls of my classroom has left a positive impact upon them, even in the moments when I wasn’t at my best. I at least hope that when one day reminiscing upon their education, my former students can see where some of what I was talking about has been helpful, whether in their studies, or other areas of life.
With the impending demolition and construction to take place on our campus over the next three years, I have been blessed with the fact that I’ll remain in my current classroom. Of course, I’ll still be taking things down, moving desks, and putting books away in the cabinets, but it will be a relatively easy transition into next school year when I’ll return in August to a campus that will look completely different than it does right now. I’ve got some thoughts on that, which you can read HERE.
With a staff of nearly two hundred teachers, it is inevitable that the summer will see change, with some teachers transferring to other schools or districts, as I did three years prior when leaving the middle school where my North Carolina career began to begin work at the high school where I am today. The ability to decide that it is time for a change and have the ability to act upon that decision is one of the benefits of working for a large school district with sixty middle and high schools combined. I have no desire to move anytime soon, but know that with life changes, personnel decisions, and other factors, our staff will look different when we return in a few months.
For other teachers and administrators, whether here in Charlotte or elsewhere, this year will bring the end of an era as they step away from the classroom for the final time. Some will do so after a small number of years, and others after decades of teaching students. As with those who transfer, there are a number of factors that play into one’s decision to retire, but as that is fairly far off for me, I struggle to wrap my head around the dueling emotions that must accompany turning off the lights in a classroom for the last time.
Over the past quarter-century, just about every teacher I had during my formative years has probably retired, and for some it was probably the most difficult decision of their lives. Others may have been counting down the years, months, days, and even hours, but if you’re looking forward to retirement that much, should you really be teaching. Trust me when I say that students can discern with relative ease which of their teachers don’t want to be there, especially those who are coasting into retirement. Sometimes, students will attempt to hasten that move, so that they can have a teacher before them who truly has their best interests at heart.
As a teacher in Charlotte, I am technically paid by the state, so my eventual retirement is subject to North Carolina’s “Rule of 80,” which means that once my years of service here plus my age equal eighty, I am able to retire with full benefits. For me, that will happen in 2040, as at the conclusion of the 2039-2040 school year, I will have twenty-three years of service and will be fifty-seven years old. Now, there’s not going to be a countdown until a June day fifteen years from now, and I am almost certain that I will want to (for various reasons) keep teaching for at least a few years after reaching that magic number. While I do look forward to an eventual time in my life when I cannot wake up to an alarm every weekday morning from August until June, I am not sure when I’ll be ready to walk away for good.
I’m not sure exactly what has happened in my brain in my early forties that has led to deeper introspection when it comes to life in general. Maybe it’s simply the aging, or becoming a father at a later age, but I certainly appreciate the fact that these thoughts have begun to percolate, as while I look around and see the occasional teacher who is unhappy with what he or she has chosen to do in life, I know that I am in a career where I am helping future generations to become the best versions of themselves, and that’s all I can ask of them. Congratulations to the graduating Class of 2025, and thank you to all of my students for another awesome year.