You’re Retired: Don’t You Miss Teaching

Flash back to 1980.

Do you remember where you were that year?

In May, I graduated from National College of Education. Lynn and I were the last two graduates to enter Ravinia Park in Gurnee, Illinois for the graduation ceremonies before the rain and storms let loose.

I had been submitting applications and resumes since March; however, it was less than a week before the start of the school year when I landed my first teaching job. In the early 80s there was an abundance of teachers, so I felt myself lucky to land a job at all.

That job lasted a year. In late winter, the district announced plans to close schools and lay off teachers. On the list of seniority, I was on the bottom. Throughout the summer, I applied to any and every job opening I could find — teaching and otherwise.

I finally landed a job at a parochial school only a month before school began.

Being a creative person and having taught at a creative and performing arts focus school, teaching in a strict catholic school was a severe challenge. The nuns in the school seemed to believe that the students shouldn’t even breathe unless they asked permission.

Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but during the first several weeks when one of the nuns passed my room and saw a student get up to sharpen his pencil without interrupting the work of others, I was admonished because he hadn’t asked permission.

I lasted two years. Whether it was because I was approached after Christmas break and told not to mention to the students that I had gotten engaged over the break, I didn’t feel that children of any age should be expected to behave like robots, or I saw through the hypocrisy of the rules, I was glad to kiss the position good-bye.

My fiancé told me that it was ok if I didn’t find another position or job, but he continued to encourage me to keep looking. At least I could fall back on teaching swimming and guarding at the local YMCA.

In fact, it was one of the mothers of a swimming student who informed me that the district where she was teaching was looking for someone who could teach English courses in writing and literature, public speaking, theater, and would be willing to direct the school play. It was with her endorsement that I landed the job.

It was home. Home for better than 15 years. Until there were some issues with politics and some underhanded game playing and I was asked, after a new fine arts wing was built, to reapply for the position in theater I had filled for 15 years; to reapply for the position in theater that I had built from 10 students and one play a year to over 50 students and 3–4 shows a year — including a touring children’s play and a theater workshop for elementary students run and taught by my theater students.

Guess what? I didn’t get the job. Go figure. It actually went to the person who had been working in the community theater and I got to teach straight English and public speaking classes. (Note: I was told later that the whole process had been a set up.)

Although I had a job, I found myself looking for a new position, not an easy task when one has over 10 years of experience in the classroom and a master’s degree.

I had several interviews that ended up with “We’d like to hire you, but you have too many years of experience.” It was a response that I heard even with one of the principals that had previously worked for the district I was at, but he had moved on. He knew my work, “but his hands were tied.”

The irony of all this is that one summer while teaching summer school, I got a phone call from a principal at my final position asking me if I was still interested in teaching theater. I jumped at the chance, got hired, moved to a straight English position the year the district began talking about eliminating all fine arts course, and in 2014, retired from that district.

I have been happily retired from teaching for four years now, but when people find out that I was a teacher, I get mixed responses.

RESPONSE #3 “Thank you. I could never do what you were doing.”

This is the response I appreciate the most. It means that the person gets the job of teaching and that it is not an easy job.

RESPONSE #2 “What are you going to do with all that time?”

This is a response that most people get upon retiring. What am I going to do? I’m going to do everything I wanted to do that I couldn’t do when I was teaching. That includes enjoying my summers. What? You think teachers have three months free. Think again. Summers are spent in a variety of different ways: attending professional development workshops (even on topics that you have heard for the last three years and could teach the workshop), reading the new textbook the district has adopted, evaluating the work you did last year, catching up with your own children and acting like a family. I could go on, but I won’t. A teacher’s summer is rarely free time.

RESPONSE #1 “Aren’t/Don’t you miss teaching?”

Miss teaching? Or do you mean miss teaching teenagers a subject they don’t want to study (I taught courses in the English department) for a district that didn’t value the teachers they had in a world that considers teachers the enemy?

I miss teaching. That I have learned over these four years.

I don’t miss endless meetings to dispense information that could have been delivered in a two to three line memo.

I don’t miss reading endless essays about the same topic.

I don’t miss teaching information to students who don’t care to listen and have a bad attitude toward school.

I don’t miss the endless paperwork: the requirement of lesson plans that are more detailed than the ones I had to submit for my student teaching and educational methods courses, especially when the professors believed that these would be the most detailed plans ever required of us; the district tests that we were expected to write and grade; and the report cards that required teachers to not only list a grade, but include a comment by number communication with parents.

But yes, I miss teaching.

I miss working with students to get them to understand difficult concepts.

I miss working with students to get them to problem solve and think outside of the box.

I miss helping students see their true potential.

Rebecca (Becky) spent 34 years in a teaching career, but when she retired in 2014, she picked up her pen and pursued her passion to write. As a high school English teacher, Becky held the philosophy that she wouldn’t give any writing assignment that she personally wouldn’t or couldn’t do. That philosophy strengthened and broadened her own writing.

In addition to publishing her writing on various platforms, Becky also blogs at Life is for Living, a blog to encourage, motivate, and help others live the best life possible. As an extension of Life is for Living, she also publishes a weekly newsletter, Let’s Chat. (Check it out HERE.) Life is for Living also has a social media presence with the group Coffee on my Porch. (Check it out HERE.)

After teaching writing for 34 years, Becky began Ink & Keyboard, a blog for writers at all levels. She supplements what she writes on the blog with a subscription newsletter, The Writer’s Notebook (Check it out HERE.) and the social media group Ink & Keyboard (Check it out HERE.)