I for one am happy that you will still be in the field of education. Although you are leaving the classroom, you will never stop teaching. For me, teaching and learning are my life. I don’t stop teaching/learning just because a bell rings. Good teachers understand that their impact on students and student learning is not limited to the classroom. Often it is that stack of papers that piles up and the lack of time to sit back in a chair and think that I feel is the biggest obstacle to my ability to teach and learn with students.

I have been fortunate enough to get a glimpse beyond the classroom as a district TOSA. This experience has given me the ability to see just how far beyond the bell to bell classroom period my impact on students reaches. It is evident to me that the most limiting factor on my ability to have a positive impact on student learning is the 4 walled classroom itself.

If we as teachers are to be at our best, we need to continue to be refreshed, inspired, engaged, and passionate about what we do. Opportunities like this afford us the chance to raise our game while at the same time providing us the opportunity to enjoy life. Teaching is not a “Cross” that we must bare. Teachers are people with dreams of our own, desires of our own, and passions beyond the classroom. If life opens doors that provide us the chance to better our financial situation or to lighten the load just enough to pursue some of our other interests, well, we have earned it, and we should grab life by the horns and live it. At the end of the day Teachers are a special breed, and regardless of our job title, we will always be Teachers!

Congratulations Dan! Take this new adventure on with the same gusto that you brought to your classroom. Your reach on impacting students has just broadened, make the most of it. Life is looking you in the face, embrace it, Love it.

Your Friend,

Brian Van Dyck

I am going to be the gadfly in your comments nook. Why? Because I think it’s sad when leaving the classroom is considered a step up. Because your students are losing one heck of a teacher. Because too many inspirational teachers leave the classroom, burn out, or check out.

I don’t know where we got the idea that leaving students to some (possibly) less-able teacher is so laudable. I see this time and again. Stellar teachers come, they leave. Each rung above Direct Student Instruction comes ribboned with the prize called “Increased Status”. Just look at the comments on this thread. You’re leaving the classroom, and it’s as if you’ve won the lottery!

You’ll have time now to rare back in a comfortable chair and think. The bell won’t ring, papers won’t pile up, you don’t have small kids of your own to pick up. All well and good, no fault there. But you left the classroom. Too many good teachers do. Why you did, and what that gesture means for the rest of the teaching profession has implications far beyond a newsletter goodbye.

Good luck anyway, even if it’s the curmudgeonly kind. You’re an inspiration.

Johanna