Transition Time: Celebrating our Student Teachers

Tonight we had a special event for our Teacher Preparation Program. Our club for pre-service teachers, the Future Active Christian Teacher (FACT) Club put on a banquet. This was a first time event, but I hope that we'll continue to have this in the future! The FACT Club leadership is pretty incredible, and a few months ago they proposed hosting all of the cooperating mentor teachers, the student teachers, the Education faculty, and--of course--all of the FACT Club members for an evening of celebration.

Wow, this was fun! Good food, good conversation, good opportunities to get future teachers, practicing teachers, and Education faculty together in a "not school" setting. Dessert was delicious too, of course...

Thank you, Dordt Dining, for always having my favorite chocolate lava cake...

And we had an inspiring speaker--the superintendent from a Christian school in our area--and several of the students offered words of thanks to the different groups represented there tonight.

I was asked to give a share some words of congratulations for our seniors who are in a time of transition: wrapping up this stage of their journey, and preparing to move into the next adventure...a classroom of their own!

Knowing I'm likely to go off the rails if I just ad lib, I wrote out my thoughts. What follows is what I shared as a blessing and send off for our seniors. This is one of those times when I feel like, "I get to do this!"

It's About the Outcome

One of the fantastic future teachers I have had the privilege of teaching this past fall tweeted this to me just after Christmas...

@d_mulder yo, heard a quote and thought you'd like it. "Teaching isn't about the income, it's about the outcome."

— Lexi (@LexitheTurtle) December 26, 2016

I love this so much, because this is just the kind of stuff we talk about in Intro to Ed. My often-stated comment that students often wind up quoting back to me is, "Teaching is not for the faint of heart." We talk about how the teaching profession is simultaneously elevated and denigrated in our society. We talk about how hard it is to be a teacher today, but what an incredible opportunity it provides for those called to work with kids, shaping the next generation.

It gives me great joy when they get it.

I often make a New Year's resolution, and since I'm at the end of New Year's Day as I write this, I'm thinking about what I should resolve to do this year. So often my resolutions end up being about things I think I should change, like "I should get more exercise," or "I should read the Bible more," or "I should take my wife out more often," things like that. And, I probably should do those things.

But is it weird if I want to resolve to keep doing something this year too?

I resolve to (continue to) keep focusing "on the outcome" with the pre-service teachers I serve.

I resolve to (continue to) make my classroom practice a model for them of what an engaged, enthusiastic teacher looks like.

I resolve to (continue to) have those challenging conversations with my students who are struggling to discern their calling--should they become teachers, or should they look for something else?

I resolve to passionately live out my calling as an educator, because it's about the outcome, not the income.

Image by Dave Mulder [CC BY-SA 2.0]