What We Don't Know

As I wrap up my classroom teaching career, I find myself a little nostalgic.  As a result, I've been telling students and colleagues a lot of stories about my early years.  That has left me thinking quite a bit about the things I didn't know when I started.  As I have tried to convey to my students for years, you have to keep an open mind about things because you don't know where they will lead.  Allow me a little self-indulgence while I describe a few that have come to mind recently.

When I entered college, I wanted to teach physics.  Just physics.  I had only recently taken it in high school and fallen in love with it, so that's what I wanted to teach.  My advisors kept saying to me, "That job does not exist.  There is nowhere that has a position where you teach physics all day, so you have to be able to teach other things."  My degree plan included three courses in chemistry and their labs as well as four lecture/lab combinations in biology, and had reasonably good attitudes about most of those.  But, the class I was snotty about was earth science.  While I liked Dr. Meleen, I just didn't care about rocks.  If you want a textbook in good condition, you can have mine because I rarely opened it.  After doing my student teaching in physics, chemistry, and physical science, I had to defend it to a panel of three.  One of those three people was my earth science professor.  After I talked about what I had learned in my classroom experiences, he told me that he was going on a partial sabbatical for the following year and wondered if I would be interested in teaching the lab section of the course for a year.  Since I was very interested in paying rent for the year, I accepted immediately.  But, yikes!  I was now going to teach the very course I had blown off.  I remember calling my mom the day before I started in a panic, saying, "But I don't know anything about rocks."  It didn't take long to figure it out because I am, above all else, a learner.  But it was a big lesson for me in keeping an open mind.  

I've been packing up things from my classroom for a couple of weeks now, and one of those things is my calculator.  That little device is twice as old as the students I teach, and I have used it to calculate scores for every test of my career, including last week's exams.  My trusty TI-81 is likely on its last legs.  I'll be sad when it finally dies.  Much like my proofreading sweater, high school backpack, and penny loafers, I won't be able to bring myself to toss it out and will place it on a shelf as a piece of objet d'art.  I've lived a lot of life with that calculator since I got in in the 10th grade.  But here's what I thought about this week.  I didn't want to buy that calculator.  It was the first year that graphing calculators had become available, and the school required it for Algebra II.  I was resistant because they were so expensive.  When they told me that I would not be able to pass Algebra II without it, I had to wonder how people had passed it the year before, when they didn't exist.  This calculator that I now love is something I didn't want to have.

There's so much we don't know before it happens.  I didn't know I would love physics before I took it and almost didn't take the honors section.  I gave up the chance to take art with one of the best art teachers in the region because I was intimidated.  I didn't know I would love putting together yearbooks.  I didn't know I would one day teach students over a computer screen.  I didn't know that attending the Learning and the Brain conference would one day lead me to an interest in teaching teachers or writing a book.  I didn't know joining the Y after I gave up the yearbook would lead to a change of mission in my life.  

We can't see the future.  We can barely see one or two steps ahead of our own feet.  But, as I've written in quite a few yearbooks recently, "Keep looking to the Lord, and he'll lead you in the way you are supposed to go."  He knows what we don't know.