… the human adventure is also incredibly rewarding. It is rewarding for those who are centered and curious, those who embrace challenge and grow, those who are optimistic and open to change.
I believe that Star Trek has formed me as an educator as much as any coursework, professional development, or experience I have ever had.
57 years ago this past September 8, Star Trek premiered on NBC television. The year was 1966. Star Trek concluded its short, three-year run in the summer of 1969 before I premiered. The ensuing almost six decades have seen that original concept result in 12 television series and 13 movies, rather remarkable for a television series that was not particularly successful when it first aired.
I have detailed my “Star Trek Origin Story” at other times in this blog and have been a Star Trek fan almost as long as I can remember. I enumerate my favorite episodes, my favorite quotes, and my favorite captains with anyone who will listen. I rewatch the shows and the movies regularly. I eagerly await all new installments of the franchise. Star Trek is my first and most abiding love.
There is a “why” question here. Why is Star Trek so important to me, so formative for me?
I considered this query this past September 8 – the now christened (and heavily marketed) “Star Trek Day” and believe I actually have arrived at my answer.
At the conclusion of Star Trek The Motion Picture, a movie I saw in theaters with my grandmother (who fell asleep!), a title card appears announcing “The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning.” I was nine at the time and mortified by my snoring matriach and had little idea what a human adventure might be.
Almost five decades later, I think I understand.
Star Trek has endured as a touchstone for me (and, I must assume, in pop culture) because it embraces the human adventure with optimism and hope. My favorite episodes and films feature morally centered characters wrestling with issues they can hardly comprehend and overcoming them not through violence but through intellectual curiosity. My favorite installments challenge those characters to grow in their knowledge of themselves and their universe. My favorite moments are those in which the characters are enlightened by something they did not know and that new information changes them.
And us.
The human adventure, it turns out, can difficult. It does not follow a nearly straight line. There are set backs on it. There are wrong turns. There are defeats. There is work, work that can seem impossible and overwhelming and never completed.
But the human adventure is also incredibly rewarding. It is rewarding for those who are centered and curious, those who embrace challenge and grow, those who are optimistic and open to change.
I have been an educator for over 30 years and the words that I used to describe my journey though that vocation are so very similar to the human adventure epitomized by Star Trek that they have become engrained in me.
The human adventure of working with students and teachers is, for me, always just beginning…