much of where my feelings are

 how do you feel about retiring?

as the months slowly, quickly, tick off,

I feel a relief coming,

like the day before vacation,

I also feel loss coming,

the last time something will be my responsibility,

my joy, my challenge,

who will do it next year? will anybody?

and, if no one picks up the baton I've carried,

is there another race going on that I can't fathom?

or is it time for obsolescence:

my chalkboard, surely to be replaced by a white board,

the School Store, considered to be an anachronism,

ready to be put out to pasture,

as no one else seems to see the great value of it,

let alone spending any extra time pulling it off,

the individuality of capitalism less important to my peers 

than the shared justice of socialism,

my English language arts classes will probably 

discard the books I've chosen,

discard the writing venues I've chosen,

discard the overarching vision 

of why and how to do what the class I've taught has done,

and they will choose what is from them

more than from their learning from my choices---

not choosing to keep what I got right,

or choosing to change what obviously could be better,

instead I imagine the new teacher will, like I did,

follow their own instincts and their own reading of the students,

 this year I am making strong efforts with the whole staff:

to assert my vision as to tuition remission,

as to the needs of the Performing Arts Center,

as to the 60th of CFS:

who we were, 

who we are, 

who we can be,

I am good at what I do,

I center upon the students,

I center at moving forward

when CFS easily relaxes into procrastination,

I continue to contend 

that a lack of consensus as to the way forward

is not a consensus to not move at all,

rather we need to grab at the future, to take a stand,

to do, albeit quickly and with possible mistakes, but to do:

to choose tomorrow over yesterday,

to choose risk over fear,

how often does one want to look back on life

and thank one's self for timidity, for not falling,

when that can also mean not rising?

what I won't miss when I retire

is how often the minor would obscure the major,

I will not miss how often I ran into

a fundamental difference in how to view

what's going on with the students:

with how much are they just contrary?

how much are they a bit lost?

as teachers get tired and frustrated,

I will not miss the tendency then

to assume kids are in control,

 that they are willfully contrary,

despite how much learning differences 

should have taught us how hard the "normal" can be,

should have taught us how much we need to help, 

to accommodate, to judge less and help more,

over the years my perspective often would lose, 

as when my colleagues would choose  procrastination over action,

or they would choose words I thought ill-advised,

the lesser trumping the greater,

I fear an increasing percentage of those 

who consider teaching as job more than as a calling, 

who choose the indulgence of their own selves 

rather than the indulgence of the students we serve,

teaching will never be lucrative in terms of monetary compensation,

rather, teaching can be incredibly lucrative in terms

of the compensation of knowing that one has helped

as students move, in fits and starts, 

toward finding the power within them that can find its way out,

we are at our best when we synthesize

ourselves as individuals and ourselves as community,

I challenge the future to live through that tension,

and to see the glass as filling, rather than as emptying.

by Henry H. Walker

November 16, ‘23