I’m retiring from K-12 teaching next week (though will continue to write this blog AND will be a volunteer teacher to the incarcerated).

Here are some things I will and won’t miss after 23 years in a high school classroom:

I will miss:

• The students! With few exceptions, they reciprocate the energy and attitude we bring to the classroom and provide the fuel for us teachers to keep going. The joy of watching them learn and grow has never grown dull. Fortunately, Facebook makes it so much easier to stay in touch with their post-school journeys, and I am a recipient of one of the greatest honors a teacher can receive: A group of former students have begun to take me out to lunch once a year. However, I’ll miss what many of us consider to be high points of the year—when former students come back to our classrooms to visit us.

  It’s not uncommon to hear people make fun of teachers who say they learned more from students than what they taught them. There’s no doubt that I have taught my students much more curriculum content than they have taught me. But I have, indeed, learned so much from them, including about how to become a better teacher, knowledge about a tapestry of different cultures, and much about who I am as an educator and as a person.

• The challenges! And, boy, have the challenges been constant! Whether it’s how to create the conditions to help a reluctant learner want to motivate themselves, or how to develop connections to students who want to isolate, or how to bring current events into the curriculum, the day-in-day-out challenges of creating an engaging classroom environment for as many students (and for me) as possible have been a source of intellectual and emotional stimulation.

• Supportive colleagues! I’ve been lucky to have several especially supportive colleagues over the years—both teachers and classified staff—and an overall school culture of support. And that culture has been developed and sustained by an incredible administrative team.

• The start of a new school year! Though most teachers, including me, feel like the summer ends far too soon, the excitement of beginning of a new school year more than makes up for it. Energized from the summer break, I find few things beat the positive energy present on the first day of school (including a clean and well-organized classroom that looks better than it will for the next nine months!).

• Union Solidarity! Though my active involvement in our local teachers’ union local varied over the years, its work and support has made these past 23 years so much better for my students, their families, and me. A joint nine-day strike by teachers and classified staff ultimately brought about the appropriate departure of our then-superintendent and several school board members, leading to tremendous positive changes in our local schools.
  

What I won’t miss:

• Dealing with artificial intelligence. I suspect that AI will make student cellphones look like a quaint problem in the not-so-distant future. Many districts are not really grappling with its implications. Though it’s been a very minimal issue in my classes, I still absolutely hate the fact that sometimes when I see a particularly good piece of writing from a student, instead of the joy and delight I used to feel, I wonder if they had AI write it for them.

• Central-office dysfunction. I understand that a district central office performs many essential functions to “keep the trains running on time” and that many people choose to work there because they believe it’s the best way to help students. I also believe that a fair number go there because they just don’t want to teach anymore. I don’t begrudge them that choice. But I wish they, and others, would recognize that once they depart the classroom, they are often like a new car driving out of the lot—a substantial amount of the value of their expertise (though I’ll admit there are exceptions) plummets when they leave the day-to-day work of what happens in a school: Students change, outside pressures on them changes, technology changes.

  That doesn’t make them valueless. Their true value could instead lie in doing more listening to active practitioners saying what they need and delivering it.

• Spending large amounts of my money on the students. Many of us teachers spend lots of money our students, and a fair number of us are in the over $1,000 annually range. They are worth every penny, but I won’t mind spending it on my grandkids, kids, or my wife (or maybe even myself), instead.

• Needing to have super bladder control. Exceptional bladder control is an essential (though often unheralded) teacher skill, since we obviously can’t leave our students unattended, faculty restrooms can be few and far-between, and there are often lines in wait. I’m all for “self-regulation,” but I’m looking forward to having a little more flexibility in this particular area.

• The commute. Though mine (25 minutes in the a.m., 30 minutes-to-an-hour in the p.m.) pales compared with others’, it clearly worsened because of highway construction this year, and that will be continuing into the foreseeable future.
  

It’s been a great run in the classroom! And I look forward to the next stage of my journey—volunteering as a teacher to the incarcerated; writing about education, as well as fiction; playing more pickleball and basketball; spending time with family and friends; reading more books; catching up on Netflix; and going back to my community organizing roots to oppose countless destructive Trump administration policies.