Educating Esme

A couple of years ago, I began my professional courses at the University of Illinois. This meant that my schedule was filled with classes that all started with C&I, also known as Curriculum and Instruction. These were intended to be the courses that prepared me to enter the education profession with more than just a bunch of random knowledge. Teaching practices, theories of education, Illinois Learning Standards, No Child Left Behind, Harry Wong, memoirs and research... these are the heart and soul of the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Of all the many, many books I was assigned to read during these two short years, very few of them were ever actually read by me. Of the articles, even fewer. I admit that I am, in many ways, a terrible student. The reality of the situation was that I often simply could not afford to buy the books that were required, and it took me almost a year to figure out that they were all available in the Education and Social Science Library on campus. Ironic, since I had been spending most of my in-between-classes time on campus in the midst of this wonderful collection of books and journals.

However, one book I did purchase, and read with great interest. It is entitled 'Educating Esme' with the sub-title of 'Diary Of A Teacher's First Year'. It is memoir of Esme Raji Codell, taken from her diary from, you guessed it, her first year of teaching. For anyone even remotely intereted in education as a profession, particularly in the public sector, I consider it a must-read. I loaned it to my mother shortly after I finished reading it. I don't know if she ever read the entire thing, but sometime after loaning it, it was misplaced. My parents moved recently, and in the process of helping them unpack a few weeks ago, I found this treasured book. Some of my bookmarks (bits of paper, cardboard, and even toilet paper), are still in there.

Since I am currently unable to get my hands on a copy of 'Eclipse' (every I know who owns it is either reading it or lives too far away for me to run over and grab), I have started browsing through 'Educating Esme'. Here is one of my favourite parts, which, if you've ever bothered to read my blog profile, you may recognise:

People snicker, "Those who can't do, teach." But, oh, how right they are. I could never, ever do all I dream of doing. I could never, ever be an opera star, a baseball umpire, an earth scientist, an astronaut, a great lover, a great liar, a trapeze artist, a dancer, a baker, a buddha, or a thousand other aspirations I have had, while having only been given one thin ticket in this lottery of life! In the recessional, as I watch them, mine, the ones I loved, I overflow with the joyous greed of a rich man counting coins. Wrongly I have thought teaching has lessened me at times, but now I experience a teacher's great euphoria, the knowlege like a drug that will keep me: Thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures. It's an almost psychotic feeling, believing that part of their lives belongs to me. Everything they become,  I also become. And everything about me, they helped to create.

And so it is with me. I felt this way when I attended the 5th Grade Graduation at Garden Hills earlier this year, and so I expect to feel every time I see one of my students move forward with their lives. I can't do everything, but I can teach others, who will then go on to do all the things that I never will.