Blogger Paul C created an entry yesterday that asked, in general, what your life’s legacy would be. If your life was lived between ####-####, he asks what would the dash represent? Most people, I would suspect, would focus on things towards the end of the dash, as that’s where the culmination of your efforts would be.
Waxing philosophically, I thought that perhaps most people would have at least two start and finish dates representing not only their entire lives but also a work life. What would you see as the dash in that era of things? While this would apply to any profession, in or out of the house, I tend to focus on my profession when I think about these things.
One of my favourite quotes is from Henry Adams – “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Again, the focus is on the end of things, your legacy. It really hit me between the eyes recently when reuniting with one of my first students.
While the end of the career is something of import, to be sure, even more vivid in memory is the beginning of my career. Here I was, fresh from the Faculty of Education, relocated to Southwestern Ontario, living in a mouse infested rental, just turned 24 years of age and my first home room had students in Grade 12. They themselves were 18 or 19. In many ways, the only difference between them and me was that I was wearing a tie! I was in a great facility – we had air conditioning whereas so many other schools didn’t. I was in one of the world’s great rooms for teaching computer science and data processing – B41 – a carpeted classroom with no windows, but had an adjoining room designed specifically for computers – glassed in with a door to close to keep the sound out. It was the most perfect of settings. We could develop our programs collaboratively, on paper with pseudo-code, flowcharts, etc. before ever going near a computer.
So, I threw out the question on Twitter and Facebook and just asked the simple question. Do you remember your first classroom? I received a number of replies.
- Mine was room 4. I haven’t thought of that in a LONG time!
- mine was Building 3, Rm 11
- 114
- 6
- Room 142. Computer lab full of PETs and not a single window. Now I work on a laptop in a passive solar home.
- Garfield Elementary School, 3rd grade Room 208 http://tinyurl.com/9eheec
- Taught my 1st 3 years in Portable #3 at Philip Pocock CSS in Mississauga.
- M6 was my first home room (stiil have the clunky heavy wooden backed chalk board duster too)
- mine was 3-11
- B41
Interesting collection of responses. Thanks to those who took the time to reply.
I’d bet that, if pressed, each one of these had some great stories behind them that helped shaped the legacy that will be left at the end of their dashes.
