Twenty Years

It occurred to me the other day--in a way that it never had before--that this is my 20th school year in education, and my 20th year with the Erlanger-Elsmere School District. Yes, other than working in high school for my dad and in college at Wal-Mart (with one semester substitute teaching in the Franklin County School System), I have spent my entire career (so far) with a single employer.

And something about my 20th year on the job has bothered me. When I reached my 10th year, I thought to myself, "Now people who hear how many years I have will figure I have some experience and some wisdom, and they'll understand I've been here for a while."  But now that I'm in my 20th year, I think to myself, "When people hear how many years of experience I have they'll figure, 1) 'He's old' or 2) 'He's been here 20 years? How can he STAND it?' or 3) 'That guy's winding down. He's going to retire soon' or 4) 'Wow, he's like an old student desk with a well in it for the ink--he's been here forever!'" Because when I was a first year teacher, I thought all of those things about teachers with that much experience.

But I don't feel old. At all. In fact, as I've often told others around me, I had NO idea when I was a child that adults felt the way I feel now. And that's a good thing, I guess. If I'd known then how much my parents were making things up as they went along, how much of their confidence and knowledge was a facade, how frightened they REALLY were, I probably wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. I mean, I TRUSTED my parents! I thought they were taking care of me! And they felt like this?

I also feel differently about sentence number two above. That question of "How can he STAND it?" that I used to utter about teachers that I knew had worked at Lloyd High School for 20 years was a subtle accusation, I guess, of a lack of ambition or motivation on their part. Why were they still working the same crummy job they'd had for all of those years?

But I don't have the same job I've had all of those years. Not really. It's funny. During my student teaching I had a professor who over the course of a semester gave about nine really rousing speeches of several minutes in length (I wrote about one of them here). One of those speeches was given on our last day, and the professor spouted off a bunch of statistics that were supposed to scare us. We were told most of us would not stay in the classroom, that if we stayed in education at all that we'd be working in jobs outside of the classroom. We were told that if we left education we'd probably end up working in an occupation that hadn't even been invented yet. We were told that--regardless of whether we stayed in education or not--we'd most likely work for 7-10 different employers.

The things he was saying were basically the same statistics in all of those annoying "Did You Know" videos that it seems every educational speaker with a PowerPoint presentation and a projector wants to show. And I used to look at myself and think that---with all of the years I had with a single employer--I must be the exception to the rule. But then I thought to myself, not really. Yes, if I had been a sophomore level English teacher for 20 years, I'd be the exception. But other than the fact that all of my adult paychecks have been signed by the same employer, my career is bearing out the predictions that professor was reading. I was in the classroom for 14 years, but I didn't teach a single class: I taught every level of English from grade 8 to grade 12, I taught speech and drama, electronic journalism, and website design. And I wasn't JUST a teacher. During those 14 years I was also the drama director, the speech and drama club sponsor (though I was a LOUSY speech and drama club sponsor), a writing curriculum coach, the lighting and sound director for the district auditorium, and a school technology coordinator. In fact, I only taught full time for the first half of those 14 years. For the last seven years I was in the classroom I only taught half time and did something else half time.

And for the last six years I have left the classroom, as my professor predicted I would, and I have been the district's Chief Information Officer, a job that, indeed, didn't exist in any school 20 years ago. So I've been with the same employer for 20 years, but I haven't been sitting still.

Now, the third comment that I used to think about teachers with 20+ years experience, that one has some traction! It HAS occurred to me that I will be retiring soon. And by soon I don't mean in the next year or anything. I'll be eligible to retire without penalty in eight years. That's not so long. And that means that in six years I'll have to REALLY start thinking about my life after the Erlanger-Elsmere School District, and I'll have to start planning in earnest for retirement (I don't mean finanical planning, Mom and Dad. I've been saving my money, I promise.). In SIX YEARS! I have a long-range plan for the technology in the school district, and it extends beyond six years. It extends beyond eight years, for that matter. And what that means to me is that the plans I'm making now for the future will not have come to fruition when I retire. I will necessarily leave with the job unfinished.That's just the way the job works. There will always be the next thing to do, and some day I'm going to have to leave that for someone else and walk away.

Which leads me to my next comment. The final thing I used to think back in my younger days--that the person with 20 years of experience had been in the district FOREVER--I also see differently now. Twenty years is nothing. I need another 100 to do all of the things that I want to do.

Oh well. We get the years that we get, and our job is not to bemoan that and complain that we don't get more. Our job is to take and accept them and do what we can with them, as much as we can, and not worry or fret that we couldn't do more.

And that's what I'm trying to do.