I mean thank goodness Columbus crashed into this enormous piece of land known as North America on a school/working day so we could all have off of school and some of our government jobs. (Bad joke #1.) Where has this gotten us today? Yes, for those in elementary, middle and high school have off, but I sure as heck don't see any of them celebrating the fact that without Columbus we wouldn't have a home. (Bad joke #2.)
For me and probably the majority of you, we don't have a break at all. Yes, we do have off of classes today, but only because this year our Fall Break happened to fall over Columbus Day, much like Columbus happened to find America. For previous years, we still had to go to class and slave away doing homework and writing papers. Isn't it my God-forsaken right as an American citizen to have a day off of school for the man that "discovered" our present homeland? Of course not, because Columbus Day means nothing anymore: people don't care. Columbus was pompously obsessed with the idea of finding a quicker route from Europe to India and he just happened to bump into a land mass. Discovery of the new land was nothing but coincidental or pure luck. But now, some of us are simply rewarded with a day off of school or work, while the rest of us are inconvenienced with the lack of mail delivery and federal buildings being closed.
I digress.
One thing Columbus and I did have in common is that we see a goal and we're set on obtaining it. He might have been a little self-obsessed and wanted the recognition of proving the earth wasn't flat, but I'm much more simpler. I want to be a good person; a great teacher; I want to help people along the way. Columbus wasn't for promoting humanity and I am.
And thanks to him, this year at least, I get to have a day off to do it all. I get to sit and fill out piles of paperwork for "intent on teaching in 2012," getting a TB test shot up my arm and paying the appropriate fees. Doesn't it seem like since the moment we've entered college, we do nothing besides pay more and more money? Hey guys, let's scrounge together the last of our change so we can pay just to have a degree. Forget the fact that we've paid years' tuition for it. Now we have to pay to have it all filed. I can't help but feel like a small part of me dies with every form I fill out and every money order I send off.
I don't mean to degrade Columbus in any sense, but I can't help but wonder what I have to do to get my picture on a stamp? That man coincidentally bumped into America and gets a national holiday and a stamp... what do I have to do?
One day all of this paperwork, miscellaneous vaccines and shots, and fees will pay off. I don't mean literally of course, because we all know the average teacher's salary. But other rewards will come. We get to help people, grow alongside of our students, and shape the lives of the future. We play a major role in the scheme of things. After all, Columbus probably had a few teachers impact him along his educational path. (Although most of them probably told him the earth was flat.) We, in theory, could help shape the life of the next Columbus. We might even be alive to hear the accomplishments of our future students, with the memory that we were a role in their young lives. They might get a stamp with their face on it, we still won't. Being a teacher is a rewarding but a nearly anonymous identity. We've devoted our lives to this and we might never get the recognition we deserve. But it is about us?
Columbus didn't get to do much actually. Yes, he found the land mass of North America, but honestly, who could have missed it? He took a chance and he found a reward. He wasn't the first to find America, but he's remembered for actually staying. A few hundred years later, the United States would finally be established as a new country. Columbus had no idea that his discovery would have resulted in this.
And here we are 519 years later. I bet Columbus would have never known his silly, self-absorbed idea, would have resulted in this. Our lives as teachers will be similar. We make day-to-day decisions and we might never see the reward or outcome. I honestly don't think any of us will ever see a stamp with our name or face on it. But we were called to do this. Someone told us something along our own path that placed the idea in our head that we were meant to be a teacher. Whatever that person said or did, we began questioning our own ideas about life, and here we are to answer them and show students how to find their own answers.
I encourage you to stretch your students' minds. Let them think outside the box or beyond the next ocean. There's a horizon out there and they need to aim for it. Set your sail and embark on a journey, but remember that you can never quite reach that horizon. It'll grow and move with you, always pushing you the next step. And who knows, you might even stumble upon a new idea or two along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment