This past week I had three reminders about why school personnel should have pensions far greater than what they receive. 1) At the annual gathering of the WTSA (West Texas Speech Association), veteran as well as novice classroom speech teachers and coaches met for workshop sessions to share ideas—not just for students competing in UIL, TFA, or NSDA, but for all students enrolled in any speech class. Listening to their instruction and watching the energy (some are older than I am), I was rejuvenated for my return to the classroom. These women and men are valuable beyond a pay scale, and I hope their school districts realize how important it is to give students safe spaces to learn to communicate. The teachers in this group are masters at just such work. Much of their efforts involve after school and weekends. Some are retired but continue to mentor or teach adult education speech classes at local colleges. Networking in this speech community has impacted me in profound ways.
2) My sister Sara is often overlooked in our family as an educator. In higher education at Texas Tech, she refers to herself as an “engaged scholar.” This is not a pretentious statement. If anything, Sara is doing the most basic and most important of jobs: teaching service-learning classes. Sitting outside on the patio last night talking, I listened to her share her passion about leading the next generation into an awareness of community involvement. For example, Sara facilitates partnerships with nonprofits, public agencies, and schools. Her classroom is not about a final exam and a research paper. Students are required to write reflections about their methods of engaging the community, planning, and implementing their service projects. Texas Tech’s Center for Early Head Start is one such program that has benefitted from Sara’s class work. Her work is practical and powerful, as education should be.
3) Finally, a scene that probably played out across many kindergartens across the state last week happened in my daughter’s classroom in tiny Ira, Texas. When Emily—now in her 13th year of teaching— was young, she cried and cried for the first two weeks of school up until the sixth grade. It mattered not that I was just around the corner or that she had the same classmates since kindergarten. She was a little girl who did not adjust to change.
On the final day of the first full week of school, Emily kept an eye on another little girl, who had been holding back the tears as long as she could. With open arms, Emily motioned for this child to move in for a reassuring hug. The kindergartner buried her little face into Emily’s body. Knowing that this same little one’s grandmother was also Emily’s school nurse at Borden County many years earlier adds a touch to the story: Mrs. Thomas never turned Emily away from her office, when all Emily needed on many days was shelter from an internal storm. Now my daughter provides that same umbrella service.
Speech classes, college electives, kindergarten. None of these are fluff classes. All of the teachers and professors in these particular arenas shape the most important aspects of a person’s education: communication, service, and empathy.
Let teachers do their jobs. If they are not professional or are not good for the profession, they’ll eventually leave. The ones who remain want to be there.
These are society’s keepers of the flame. Don’t let them burn out.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thoughtprovoking commentary appears occasionally in several West texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
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