Still Learning: Lessons From a Lifetime in the Classroom — September Song

by Julia Sneden

Editor’s Note: In advance of Election Day when changes to Boards of Education might be on the ballot, we felt Julia Sneden’s article well timed.

Labor Day has come and gone, and from now until next summer, one quarter of the United States — students and teachers — will be in school almost every weekday. The rest of us will probably think about our schooling at least once a day, whether in anger or gratitude or love. Our teachers have marked us, happily or unhappily; our studies have enlarged us or frustrated us; our classmates have had a profound effect on how we perceive ourselves. Every American who has been there considers him/herself an expert on the subject of school.

And why not? You can’t spend six to eight hours a day, 180 days a year, for a minimum of ten to twelve years in a school system without having an opinion on its good and bad aspects. Unfortunately, many of us dwell on the latter. I spent a lot of time disliking school when I was young, even though I was a good student. My husband, who was an even better student, adored every school he ever entered, even when his teachers were not charismatic. The difference seems to be that his schools had smaller classes, and curricula that included art, drama, and music, which brought an amount of joy into his schooling.

Teaching is almost our family business. I’m the daughter and stepdaughter of teachers; I’m married to a teacher; I am the mother of a teacher, the sister of a teacher, and I myself am a retired teacher. I came to the profession through the back door, having asserted my independence early on by announcing that I would never be a teacher. I managed to hold out until I had developed a fairly successful separate career and had borne three children, but then I discovered the rewards of watching my own offspring learn. I was not, I hasten to add, home schooling them. I was just being their mother. But parents are a child’s first teachers, and they’re probably the most important ones. By the time my youngest son was ready for school, I decided to be paid for what I’d learned to love: the process of teaching and watching little children learn. I never looked back, and taught for 25 years, and loved it.

Read the rest of Julia Sneden’s Essay