Technology, Teaching, and Retirement

Well, eventually, I was going to get around to this topic as it is one of the main areas of focus for me right now. As I’ve mentioned on my websites an probably here, I plan on retiring at the end of the next school year. I’ve been teaching on and off for the past thirty years – continuously for the past 20 – and I’m at the point where I’m ready to hang it up.

I love teaching. I always have. Back when I was in high school, I planned on being a high school history teacher. Later in college, I was going to teach university level anthropology (and picked up a Ph.D. along the way). Eventually – during a fieldwork stint in Northern California – I decided that I was going to become a regular classroom teacher. I was thinking about Fourth Grade; I’m not sure why Fourth Grade seemed to be the right level (it might have been Miss McNamara my Fourth Grade teacher), but it was the one that I fantasized about when I imagined having my own classroom.

So, let’s take it as established that I love teaching. Why quit? I’m finding that teaching just dominates my life now whereas it didn’t seem to do so before. I find that there is more to do in the same amount of time. When I taught math in Pakistan, I taught six periods a day, but to just three grade levels thus there were three lessons to prepare for each day. When I taught computers in Pakistan, I taught four levels. Right now I teach four levels of math, a level of social studies, and three levels of computers. That gives me 8 levels to prepare for. Class size is somewhat irrelevant here as I do more work with my small classes here than I did with my much larger classes in Pakistan. Add to this trying to keep a school full of aging computers functioning, I spend most of my waking hours working during the week, along with a significant amount of time on the weekends when I do grading that I should have done during the week.

So I have less personal time than before and more that I want to do than ever before. More to do? What’s the hurry? Well, the obvious answer is age. I’m at that age where friends, colleagues, and acquaintances have started dieing. Dealing with mortality is something that I may work on a little more, but death itself is not the worry. I’d just like to get a few more things in while watching the kids grow up. There are some things that I think that I could contribute to the educational community and teaching a few kids in a small school is getting to be at the bottom of that list of contributions.

Once upon a time, in the Pre-9/11 world, I had one of those dream jobs of Technology Coordinator where all that I had to do was teach a few classes and then teach teachers how to integrate technology in with their work. Wow! It was ideal, and kind of frightening. After all, I had wanted a job like that for several years, and suddenly I had it. But then it was what am I going to do? I took a few breaths and started slowly. It was going to be interesting, then 9/11 happened and the job was history. Having a tech coordinator who teaches full load just is not getting the best of the deal for the classroom teacher who wants to learn about technology, and wants to use it in their classroom.

So what can I do if I’m not teaching? I’ve been thinking in terms of being an online mentor , a virtual fairy godfather, for teachers who want to do things but don’t have the time and resources. That might mean extending what I do now (on a limited scale) with giving advice and hints to folks who email me based on reading one of my websites. It might mean developing some more easy to use lesson plans along with justifications for their use and cross-curricular references and connections. It might mean…Well who knows? I’ll be flexible, free, and willing. I’m looking forward to the possibilities.

More on retirement in the near future.