The Men Who Look Over My Shoulder

I don't know how well you can see this, but this is the wall behind my school desk.  I believe it is important to establish credibility, so I hang my college diploma and my certification.  The thing at the bottom was added after the yearbook staff managed to surprise me with the dedication during the lockdown.  The two photos are of the two men who taught me what I now teach.  Mr. Sandberg, who taught me physical science 31 years ago, is the man in the color photo on the right; he is holding a Bible that I gave him as a goodbye gift we both left the school in which he taught me.  The man in the black and white photo was my physics teacher, Mr. Barbara.  (Incidentally, I took both photos, but for the black and white one, I not only took that photo, but I also developed the film and printed it in a darkroom.  I don't know why that matters to me so much, but it does.). Since the real first day of school is Monday, I thought it was a good moment to reflect on the power of these pictures.

These men look over my shoulder as I plan to teach students the same content that they taught me.  I've written about both of these men on this blog before and why they are meaningful in my life, so you can click the links at their names if you wish to read about them.  That isn't what I want to write about today, even though I would be happy to talk about them all day long.

What struck me this week as I pointed to these pictures as part of my orientation speech is the connection education provides to all of us, like a game of Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon.  

Education is a lot of things.  For some narrowly focused people, it is simply job training.  Those are the "When am I ever going to use this in life?" people.  They are the people who don't recognize they use algebra every day.  I'm glad that we can use the things we learn in school in our jobs, but if I thought that was the point, I wouldn't find it very compelling; so I am grateful it is more than that.  Others, including myself, have a view of education that is about knowing God.  As I told my students this week, "Education makes you a fuller human being.  We are made in the image of God, and He has given us all of this to help us know Him better, and learning it helps us to reflect that image more fully."  And, of course, there is a range of thoughts in between these two extremes that are also true of education.  But when I looked at these pictures before leaving on Friday, I thought about the fact that my students are being taught, in part, by these two men, which led me to think of education in a different way than I had before.  It is a connection to both the past and the future.

This isn't a new idea.  I just hadn't thought about it much before this week.  There are many examples of how people pass down knowledge to multiple generations through teaching. 

• Socrates mentored Plato, who passed philosophy on to Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great.  
• Yoda taught Luke Skywalker who then trained Rey.  
• When Newton built on what Galileo had established; he called it "standing on the shoulders of giants" and credited it with his ability to "see farther than other men."  

Some of my students have become teachers, which means that it is possible there is something happening in their classroom because it happened in mine, which is true only because it happened in Mr. Sandberg's or Mr. Barbara's (and many others as well).  And the chain could go farther back and farther forward as they were taught by people before and my students will also have students who teach others.  I don't know if I am adequately conveying how powerful I think this is because I feel like I am rambling, but in my brain, this is really awe-inspiring.  

The world of education has been rocked in recent years.  The pandemic was tough and amplified some of the problems that were already evident.  Public education is experiencing a profound teacher shortage.  We are all exhausted.  But this - this idea that education perpetuates knowledge so we don't have to discover everything in every generation - this has not changed because it cannot.  

Thank you to these men who look over my shoulder.  Thank you to those not pictured who are also part of my teaching.  Thank you to those who taught them.  Thank you to Sal Kahn and Hank Green and others who teach online to provide a horizontal connection as well.  Thank you to all whose teaching has informed my own.  Your influence will carry farther than you or I can ever know.