Back to school

Being a teacher is an honorable, respectable, rewarding, and sometimes maddening profession. For all the stress it brings, it is still a really good job and a career that no person should ever have cause to be ashamed of. There are so many good things about teaching (if there weren't, I never would have survived for 26 years). However, one of the things I've never enjoyed about the teaching profession is continuing education. I know that sounds like an oxymoron... a teacher opposed to the continuation of his/her learning. I'm not opposed to learning and I believe a person NEVER stops learning. What I'm opposed to is being forced to take college courses for the purpose of recertification every five years. If I felt these courses were beneficial or enhanced my teaching in some way, I'd be all for them. This is usually not the case though. These courses normally involve material that is not pertinent to what I'm teaching in my classroom. I'm convinced this is nothing more than a money grab by the state department of education (it costs more than $200 to renew my license every 5 years) and by institutions of so-called higher learning. My former principal used to joke that schools that offer courses for recertification have more employees hired to count money than to teach and grade the course work. Although spoken in jest, it does paint a picture of how valuable (or not) these continuing education courses are.

Now that I've said all that, guess what time it is for me? That's right. Time for me to renew my teaching license. Today I received in the mail my text books and syllabus for the course I will complete in the next few months. When finished, I will be a licensed teacher for another five years (and then I will complete the same process again when my license expires in the year 2021). The tables are turned today, folks. The teacher becomes the student and this teacher will be doing homework instead of assigning it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for class. On a brighter note, it looks like I'll be the big man on campus this year. Not bad for a 49 year old, fat, gray haired, balding college student who has a date with a beautiful 51 year old co-ed (aka my wife :-)