what process, you ask? Has it something to do with OWA?
Not directly.
The process is figuring out what to do with the rest of my life.
In May I will turn 66. At that age one can work full time while drawing social security and pay no penalty.
I am already eligible for a pension from teaching.
I still enjoy teaching the kids. It is the other crap with which one has to deal that is wearing me down.
I also wonder if I might perhaps be able to contribute more doing something else.
Besides, this year I have no bad classes, and realistically no bad kids. It would be a nice group with which to end my teaching career.
So I have started the process of exploring alternatives.
Let me share a bit beneath the fold.
And if you are not interested or think I'm self indulgent for sharing this with this community, which has been my electronic home for approaching 8 years, perhaps this is not the diary to which you should be paying attention.
I lie on my sofa, one cat curled up on my arm, another debating whether to jump up and join him.
i read the momentous events going on around the nation, and perhaps soon around the world.
I know I make a difference for many of my kids, but wrestle with several issues
- I teach government, and right now I am not sure what our government is, and thus what I should be teaching them. By itself this might push me in the direction of retiring
- I have tried to do other things to make a difference for public schools, but I cannot give those things, including my online writing, the attention they perhaps warrant because so long as I remain in the classroom, my students have to be my greatest priority. With 170+ that priority can be very time consuming. It is not just the hours of reading and grading papers, nor is it the planning per se. It is also taking the time to reflect, so that i can properly adjust to the needs I should be able to identify. That is also very tiring.
- I have at times had opportunities to do other things which I had to decline because of my commitment to teaching
- a part of me might enjoy not working so hard - it is hard for me to imagine anything, even politics, as time-consuming and draining as teaching young people about our government and our politics.
But then there are the counters to these considerations:
- as it is, I get depressed on weekends because I am away from the young people I teach
- over the years I have developed my own voice. Were I to go to work politically, or for a union or a think tank, it is not clear that I could maintain that voice.
- I still want to make a difference for students. Yet I know that after even one or two years no longer in the classroom my voice will no longer be grounded in that experience
I know of an interesting doctoral program that might empower me to operate at a very different level, they know of my interest, the financial support makes it possible to do, but I wonder if that would remove me too much from the reality in which I have been grounded for 17 years. Even if they would not view my age as a barrier to selection, which they may, it is a three year program, which means I would be 69 when I finished it. And even if that is not a barrier, there is the fact that there are around 40 applicants for each space. Has what I have done made me attractive enough for them to consider me?
Next weekend and perhaps for a few days more, i expect to have some time to reflect. Next friday I undergo some relatively minor surgery which will keep me house-bound for several days minimum. It is possible i will not return to school until the following Wednesday.
In the meantime I have already begun conversations with people who know me and my work, and whose judgment I trust, to ensure as I begin this journey of exploration I do not make the mistake of being locked inside my own mind.
I remember lines from a favorite poem that speak very much to a soul that in many ways is as restless as mine:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
They are from the fifth and final stanza of Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.
It is possible that then end of this exploration will be that I remain in the classroom with a renewed commitment, perhaps with a more clear focus of how I should teach, and how that will relate to any activities outside the classroom.
I am aware of that possibility. After all, at 66 I could continue in the classroom and simultaneously draw Social Security, which in my case would provide me around an additional 27-28K/year. Or I could simply continue to teach until I am 70, in which case my social security would be more like 36k/year.
Finances are part of the consideration, but not as important as the sense that what I do is meaningful, productive.
I will be 66 in May.
It is time.
Now the process begins.
What do I do with the rest of my life?