Retired professor supports English education students with targeted bequest.
Once an English teacher, always an English teacher. Sometimes this seems a curse when I cannot avoid noticing a missing apostrophe or comma. But sometimes, it’s a delightful blessing, as when a precocious grandson asks me to read his essay and seeks advice on whether he should submit it for a school contest.
The delight is doubled when I experience his wordsmithy and creative mind at work. As we chat, he tells me how much he likes his sixth-grade English teacher, then adds, “I think English teachers are great, Gramma.”
So being a teacher, even a retired one, has its perks.
Friends ask me if I miss my job since my retirement from Westfield State three years ago. I respond that I miss watching my English education students move from being students to becoming student teachers to emerging as skilled teachers.
I miss the environment of commitment and enthusiasm of students as they travel paths that lead to classrooms.
An important symbol of this journey is the opportunity for some of our University English education students to attend the annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention.
When I accompanied students to Philadelphia for the convention a few years ago, we shared the excitement of learning from creative and innovative educators, an experience students felt was a unique opportunity for professional growth.
Last year, Dr. Sophia Sarigianides, the present English Education Coordinator at Westfield State, accompanied students to the convention.
Afterwards, one said, “It was an honor to attend the NCTE Convention in Las Vegas. I learned a lot from the experience and will continue to attend conferences in the future because presenters provide tangible strategies while inquiring about and complicating education as we know it. It allowed me to realize that being a teacher is meant to be an ongoing learning process.”
Another offered this: “The Convention is a fantastic way to continue adding on to the theory and practice you have been mentally collecting at Westfield State…I have no doubt that going to the NCTE Convention had a huge impact in getting my mind…ready for practicum…”
These students and others were able to grow from NCTE conventions because of the NCTE Travel Award, initiated by the English Education Program in 2005 and supported by the Westfield State Foundation Inc. (See related stories on Pages 36 and 37.)
I find it deeply gratifying to know that our students will continue to develop as educators through this opportunity, one that would be unaffordable except for the NCTE Travel Award.
When I learned that I could target a bequest in my will for the specific purpose of helping to sustain this award, the decision to do so was easy. Now I know that my own commitment to education can endure.
It’s my hope that others might see this as one way to “pay it forward” into the classrooms and children of tomorrow, many of whom will be ably served by Westfield State English teachers.
So, although I may wish to turn away from the compulsion to add or erase an apostrophe on that flyer, I think that being “always an English teacher” has its benefits.
I have a seat at a table with those who look at a child and see possibility, creativity and hope.
May I pull out a chair for you?
