OK folks. Heres my history lesson. Forty (40) years ago this week I was setting up my first classroom. At the ripe age of 20, with my new college degree (and awaiting my teacher certification in the mail), I was busy setting up my first classroom at Ft. Dale Academy for a bunch of 4th graders to arrive. I was not even legal yet, but I was ready to begin my teaching career. Thanks to Mrs. Lillian Morgan and Elisa Poole (board chair), I was given the opportunity to marshal a bunch of 4th graders into the new year. Suanne Manning Lewis, Dana Casey, Terry Tanner, were a part of this first class I ever taught. This was a challenging year -- I had 32 bright young minds to mold in 9 months, but a most rewarding year. Somewhere in the middle, a teacher dropped out, and I found myself teaching high school accounting during my free period, and these kids were almost my age. My years at Ft. Dale Academy were fantastic, and from that starting point I can honestly say that Ive never had a bad job. In the 80s I was in Savannah, GA as a school principal, and as the mounting research about early brain development started to emerge, I got drawn to the years from birth to five. After a stint at the college level as an instructor at the AU College of Business, I moved into the early childhood field and have never left it. I know that if we dont get it right in the first few years, everything else is remediation, and that has rarely proven to be very successful. The thing I miss most about my job now is that I dont get to interact with the willful, bright, spontaneous, needful and vibrant students -- young people who Ive always enjoyed and respected. But, lets celebrate -- Im still here, and Im still preachin that if we dont get it right at the beginning, were always going to be working hard at the end. Right now, Were paying for failure -- and I ask, why dont we invest in success. Thanks to everyone who has made my life career a fulfilling and rich journey-- I would not change a thing about it. And, God bless all of you who are FACEBOOK friends that I have taught or worked with through the years. Im just celebrating a 40-year career and hoping that my work has meant something. FYI -- Im still at it and have no plans to slow down.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 02:48:21 +0000
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