Success

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.  (Attributed to Emerson, but not his.)

I had a weird day.  The first day back after a holiday is always hectic and full of nonsense. I was trying to get about fifteen things done today, obligations fulfilled, clubs organized and running smoothly, fundraisers organized and off the ground, and my stupid rolling chair that I've had for seven years now broke.  One of the metal legs that support the wheels just shattered.  I've never seen anything like it.  It didn't break in any of the expected places; instead it broke in one of the places it shouldn't have been able to break....

I felt like I'd lost a friend.  That chair and I have logged a great many hours....grading...sitting and listening to the woes of friends, peers, students, sharing joys and lunches with people who are no longer there, supporting me as a teaching platform when my knee had to be rebuilt.  I know it's silly, but I felt like I lost a part of my teaching history when I had to carry it out like a piece of trash.  I don't know why I attach so much meaning to inanimate things.  Too much imagination, I guess.

Later in the day, I found that I'd gotten nominated for an award at school.  I'm very honored that the people who nominated me thought that I was worthy of it.  I don't think I'll win; the other people in the running are certainly more qualified and deserving than I, but it's nice to be considered. 

The last thing I did was fight with a class that was largely apathetic about the subject matter.  It was depressing and made me feel useless and terrible.  When the bell rang, I went out to bus duty sad and tired.

After school, I decided to leave fairly early and go get a new chair since the wooden one I had subbed for my destroyed roller was a real literal pain to sit in for very long.  I got the task done quickly and on sale at the local Office Thing, got everything loaded (in the rain, of course), and was heading home. 

Somewhere I heard the phrase "a successful" something, maybe on the radio.  I can't remember if they said "successful doctor" or "successful lawyer" or some such, but it got me thinking of my day as a whole and my career as a whole.  In all the time I've been dealing with education (read: since I was old enough to know what my mother did for a living), I have never heard anybody called a "successful teacher."  It hit me hard enough to make me laugh. 

I'm sure it is mostly because we don't make a bajillion dollars a year.  We do, for the most part, live lives of semi-poverty.  It probably seems to most to be the fool's path to go to school as long as we do and then get so horribly little for our pains.  Some days, to be perfectly honest, it seems so to me as well.  I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in one of those other professions where people are paid on a level commensurate with their education.  I can't even imagine, most days, what it would be like to be paid on a level that would allow me to pay all my bills every month....

So can we be "successful"?  And if so, how?  I think we can be.  I think we can be successes if our students feel better about themselves when they walk out than when they walked in because they know more about themselves.  I think that if our students know more about the world and about their place in it, then we're successes.  I think we're successful if our students can take the knowledge we give them and stand strong on their own feet.  I hope I'm turning out this kind of student.  After today and days like today, I'm not so sure.  But hopefully, even if nobody ever says it to me in life, even if it's never written up in a trade journal or remarked on during a radio show, maybe they can use it as my epitaph. 

"Successful Teacher."  It would be nice to be remembered that way.