This past week was two of our in-service days for our school diocese. We spent two days together as a community united to move forward and prepare ourselves with the resources to educate our students for the future. As our time came to a close our superintendent, a wonderful, faith-filled man, reminded us that our mission was not just to educate our students but to help nurture the seeds of faith planted by our God before we were born. He reminded us that we are all on this journey of faith together and that we have been chosen to help our students focus on the path that leads to everlasting salvation with Jesus Christ.
His words touched my heart and awakened my soul. It made me think about something I had written for one of my master’s classes. My professor asked, as one of our writing assignments, to give a speech to incoming education majors. I would like to share it as an insight to what it truly means to be a teacher.
To those who are teachers, I salute you and applaud your hard work, enthusiasm and love for helping others. I am truly blessed to be a part of such a noble profession with you. I hope my words speak to your heart.
Here is the speech. It is a bit lengthy, but if it influences just one person to join our noble profession then I have done my job. Good day and God bless!
“Good afternoon my brothers and sisters. My name is Theresa Haggerty and I have been fortunate enough to have been teaching now for 25 years. I address you as brothers and sisters because if you choose to become a teacher you will be inducted into the unique and prestigious community of teacher-hood. Some of you may laugh, but it’s true.
We as educators are the elite when it comes to professions. Tell me in what other profession can you be more recognized than a movie star or remembered years later in life and never seem to grow old? How many other professions can you say helped someone to read, write, discover, promote self-esteem and shaped a life for the future? And in what other profession can you find personal satisfaction of making a difference at the end of a day, month or even years of hard work for little or no pay? Not many I can think of.
For you see, teaching is not only a profession but a mission in life. For those who choose to accept the challenge- yes, I said challenge- the challenge to change the world and make it better one person at a time- it is a defining moment in life.
This mission is not for the faint of heart. And for the one who coined the phrase, “those who can do and those who can’t teach”, obviously never set foot in a classroom and surely never set foot in a middle school classroom!
I stand before you today with 25 years of experience and I am still full of enthusiasm, wonder, awe, hope and fortitude when it comes to teaching in my classroom. The ideals and beliefs I held over 25 years ago are still here, yet they have been fine-tuned and some discarded, but my goals are still the same. And if you choose to become one of us, then I hope after 25 years you still feel the same as when you first started out.
You must understand that teaching is just an extension of yourself. What you feel about yourself, your beliefs and how you see yourself all make a difference in your teaching. This is what is called ‘teacher self-efficacy’ and studies have been done by such researchers as Anita Woolfolk and Frank Pajares on how that self-efficacy or how a teacher perceives their teaching abilities affects the dynamics of the classroom.
Who we are as individuals permeates through in our teaching.
Studies have shown that teacher self-efficacy dominates the teacher/student relationship in the classroom. It is the teacher who is in ultimate control of the dynamics in the classroom. Teachers control the momentum, the enthusiasm, the interest, the discipline, the discovery and the motivation of the student.
That’s a lot of power you may be saying to yourself and that is why I say that teaching is not for the single minded or timid.
We shape the future! We educate the next generation of teachers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, scholars, nurses, inventors, soldiers, and even presidents.
As Maslow states, “we must learn to think holistically rather than atomistically.” We teach for the future, not just for the moment. And our purpose as educators is as Maslow also states, “the development of full humanness.”
What we teach our students reaches far beyond one generation or the next.
I’m sure when Aristotle, Socrates, William James, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Maslow, Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa all reached their peak of self-actualization they realized that what they were doing for mankind would reach far beyond their present time.
What I can tell you of my personal experiences in teaching can fill a book, and that book would be filled with drama, intrigue, stories of hard work, struggle, self-discovery, fulfillment, enthusiasm, love, sadness and hope for the future. It is through the personal relationships, by that I mean, teacher/student relationships within the classroom, that have sustained my teaching for all these years.
For when you teach you must remember that we have an impact on our student’s lives. We are with them for most of their waking hours and other than their parents and immediate family, we are the ones who help shape who they are to become. We in many ways satisfy their basic needs of love, security, curiosity and acceptance. From there we can help them develop habits whether practical, emotional or intellectual, that will help them face not only academic challenges, but other challenges they may face in their lives.
When I taught middle school in New Orleans at a catholic school, I was privileged to have taught entire families. It was a small community of about 85,000 people and very close knit when it came to family dynamics. Those students in turn sent their own children to our school. Our school was a family tradition, so you can understand my sadness when Hurricane Katrina wiped that all away for me.
Teaching for me was and still is my first love in life. Like Maslow said, “It is possible in the aesthetic experience or the love experience to become so absorbed and poured into the object that the self, in a very real sense, disappears.”
I identify myself with my mission of teaching. I know I am making a difference in the world one student at a time. And the relationships I have fostered over the years are what I reflect upon today to strengthen me as I start over again in Florida.
The positive experiences of sharing in my student’s lives in New Orleans have helped clarify, and reinforce my commitment to my mission of teaching. To have shared in their academic challenges and successes, their times of self-discovery and self-motivation, their high school graduations, Confirmations, weddings, births of children, and walking some of them to the grave have given me so much fulfillment and happiness in my life.
It has helped me to realize that even now that our time has passed we will always be connected by our time together and the memories of not only academic lessons but life lessons learned as well.
As you can clearly see, teaching not only affects the students but the teacher as well. That is why I say that teaching is not for the faint of heart or the timid.
Teaching is to be embraced fully as a way of life and in that journey we take with our students we are also affected in some way. How can we not? We don’t teach animals – we teach human beings and children at that. As they form associations we form them too.
In some way we are all left permanently touched by each other’s gifts and talents.
Teaching touches the future. It is the front row seat to what we are to become as a society, civilization and nation. How can you not want to be a part of it or to see it develop firsthand? I love the view from where I am. To me teaching is not just a profession but a mission in life. I am truly blessed to have been chosen to be a teacher and a catholic school teacher as well.
And when all is said and done and my life comes to an end I’d like to be able to say like the great writer Erma Bombeck: “When I stand before God at the end of my life. I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I have used Everything You Gave Me.”
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