With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
MODERATION IN ALL THINGS
January 4, 2023
The majority of teachers with whom I have worked do so much more than teach. They moderate and direct and coach. The majority of teachers with whom I have worked are so deeply dedicated to our schools that I run out of words to praise them. What I once approached as roles to either advance my career or to put a few more dollars in my pocket, I now see quite differently.
Yearbook Moderator, Student Council Moderator, Chapel Choir Moderator, Service Co-Director, Bookstore Manager. I have served in all of these capacities in my 30 years working in schools.
Being a moderator was, for me, part-in-parcel to being a teacher, especially early in my career before I moved into administration. Perhaps I did these things because I needed extra money and these positions all had associated stipends. Perhaps I did these things because I wanted to spend time with students in different contexts. Perhaps I did these things because I was good at some of them.
Likely I did them for a combination of the reasons listed above.
Being a moderator of a club or activity engaged me in a different way than being a classroom teacher engaged me and that was often fun. I look fondly back on being up against deadlines for the yearbook and working late into the night – sometimes with students, more often with my co-moderator – and writing copy and cropping photos. I remember setting up for dances and blood drives and mission weeks as student council co-moderator and smile. I remember coordinating sign ups for students to meet their graduation requirements in service. I remember setting up two full gymnasiums of books back in the paper books days for over 1000 students to get their texts purchased.
What I have done longest and continue to do to this day at Mullen High School is sing and play guitar in the choir. Making music with students and with my colleagues for liturgies at school has been the most life-giving of all of the work I have done outside the classroom and outside the role of administrator. I will not suggest that everyone who has heard the music made by groups in which I have participated would say that it has all been wonderful. It has not always been. But what it has been – for me – is a reminder of the great gifts of the vocation I have had and the work I get to do.
Periodically, I get to leave a meeting and go strum my guitar. Periodically, I get to – with my colleagues and students – lead communities in sung prayer. Periodically, I get to sing. What an amazing blessing this is.
What an amazing blessing all of these opportunities, in their own ways, have been. Each day and every moment of being a moderator was not a delight, but the overall impression of all the work I did in those roles is that I am glad I had them. Very glad.