The Highest of Callings
By Peter W. Cookson, Jr.

As the school year comes to an end you have an opportunity to review your first year of teaching, counting your successes and reflecting where your hope for your students, perhaps, was not fulfilled. Becoming a teacher is a complex process; we are asked to be all things to all people, and we assume complex roles as classroom managers, teachers, counselors, colleagues and evaluators. The fate of the children we teach and from whom we learn rests in the palms of our hands.

Shaping reality
For many of our students, their lives are already very hard. They may be poor, they may speak English as a second language, they may have cognitive learning challenges and they may have emotional difficulties that are invisible to us, but are real nonetheless. Children today are exposed to a very violent and materialistic world; who knows the intricate and subtle processes by which they shape reality?

A perilous journey
As a teacher you are your students' guide on their perilous journey to adolescence and adulthood. Perhaps, in the hurly-burly of every day life, it is difficult to reflect on your role as guide and mentor. Consumed as we are by standardized test scores, you may not always be aware of your long-term impact on the children you teach. It is difficult to measure how even a kind word can make a child's day better and give him or her courage.

Great souls
Parts of teaching seem to be bureaucratic routine, even petty. At other times, schools can be places of joy and energy. Yet underneath these experiences is something deeper - your own development and your ability to think in increasingly generous and affirmative ways. Great teachers are great souls who draw to them the inner lives of the children they teach. They impart to their students not only a love of learning, but a love of self.

Remember the laughter
This year you have touched the lives of your students in complex ways that you will never fully know. You should always remember the laughter, the electric teaching moments, the times when you resolved classroom conflicts, the friendships you made with your students as well as your ability to befriend the students who may not have been your favorites. Above all, remember that you were a beacon of light to your students in their times of darkness.

The path to happiness
Recently, I visited a school that is located in a very poor part of the city in which I live. The building is old and run-down and the grounds around the building are in desperate need of maintenance. Eighty percent of the children are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Many of the students have three meals a day at the school; a high percentage are homeless. The walls of the school's corridors and the classrooms are in desperate need of fresh paint and supplies are scarce. Yet, I saw teachers who were energized, smiling and hopeful. I saw teachers who were using classroom materials that they had bought themselves. I saw teachers talking amongst themselves about how best to help a struggling student. And I also saw parents helping out in the classrooms for both the love of their children and their belief that education is the path to both happiness and success.

Teachers are weavers
If you could imagine all the classrooms in America on a single day, think of all the human drama that would be seen, felt and heard. Teachers are the weavers of the social fabric; today our fabric is worn and torn in many places. Many of our children live in these torn places where there is no safety net, except for their teachers.

Society can be characterized as struggling between regressive and progressive tendencies. Social regression is marked by intolerance, anger and fear of the imagination. Social progress is marked by openness to difference, celebration of complexity and enthusiasm for what is possible.

When I was growing up, how many teachers told me that I could do something even when I thought I could not? Every one of my teachers helped shape the progressive side of my biography. Unfortunately, I will never get the opportunity to thank them all personally; I can only show my thanks by the work I do in education.

A genuine difference
As you reflect on your first year of teaching, I hope you feel a deep sense of satisfaction. Despite all the difficulties, don't forget that you have touched the lives of your students in profound ways. Because of you, your students are able to read, compute, imagine and begin to think for themselves. For the precious hours that you are with them in the course of the day, you've opened up windows to the world for them and made the impossible possible and the possible probable. Their success is the gift that they give to you in return for your dedication, commitment and continuous effort on their behalf - and on behalf of all of us who hope for a better world.

Always remember that as a teacher, you make a genuine difference. It is the highest of callings.

Peter W. Cookson, Jr. is the founder of TCinnovations and the Dean of the Graduate School of Education of Lewis & Clark College. He is also founder of the Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation at Teachers College at Columbia University.

May, 2007, Vol.37, No.8