Education is my life's work-why stop now?

When I was six years old, I lined up my stuffed animals and taught them. Looking back on that time, I realize that they were all very well behaved. I get it, by the way, all of you who didn't know what you wanted to be when you grew up. I have friends, family members, and students who didn't know what they wanted to do until they were already grown up.

Me?? Who knows why, but not only did the stuffed animals get math and reading lessons, I even begged my sister to let me do her homework for her when we were young girls. What a school nerd I was...and still am. I asked Dave a month or so ago what he thought about the idea of me going back to school to get my doctorate in something else as well as the current education doctorate I have. He vehemently said "No, we don't need to get another doctorate". 
 
Fast forward to 5th grade, when Claudia Edgerton, my beloved teacher who still has to put up with silly Facebook posts every year when Teacher Appreciation rolls around. My parents were divorced, we'd go stay with my dad on weekends, and every single Monday morning, there would be a note on my desk from Mrs. Edgerton, written in her beautiful handwriting on her green and cream colored-stationery, saying something like, "Dear Shelly, I know it must be tough going back and forth from your mom's and dad's homes, but if anybody can handle it, I know you can. Let me know if you need a hug.  Love, Mrs. Edgerton" And when she read to us every day after lunch, I dreamed of being able to order as many books from Scholastic books that I wanted. When I started babysitting, all my money would go to a book order at school. There was a brief time in 6th grade that I set up my tape-recorder and used an old newspaper someone had thrown away in the apartment dumpster (did I really dumpster dive for a newspaper??) that I used my hair brush as a microphone because I thought it might be fun to be a newscaster, but I honestly believe that was simply preparation for teaching Professional Development (PD) sessions to educators. 

When it came time to start looking at colleges, I obviously looked for ones that might offer a scholarship maybe for music (I had decided in my junior year of high school after watching my choir directors in San Antonio teach us so brilliantly that I was going to teach Music---maybe also a decision made in part because my step-mom who I loved so dearly was a music teacher). I even had the chance to do a practicum at the elementary school down the street from my high school with the music teacher, and she taught me a bunch. My parents wouldn't be able to pay for four years at a college where I couldn't get scholarships, grants, and loans, and I didn't want to live too far away from San Antonio, because my sweet mother would have missed me too much. Since I had an extra credit hour I didn't need for academic course work, I got to be an assistant in the Guidance Counselor's office at my high school in my senior year. So, in the spring semester, I saw an announcement go up in the counselor's office for Trinity University looking for about 20 San Antonio high school students who wanted to go into teaching and get a scholarship. Of course I applied, but San Antonio was a big city, and 20 selected? I got asked to come for an interview, and I remember Dr. John Moore, the Chairman of the Education Department at Trinity, and several other faculty members welcoming me into the room for the interview. Mother had saved up money and put a beautiful dress on lay-away at a consignment store in Alamo Heights (kind of the swanky area of San Antonio), and I walked into that interview, terrified and then....not. Why? I was talking about what I was made to do---teach! A short time later, I received a letter from Trinity University, telling me that I had been awarded a scholarship to be a Brackenridge Intern. The money paid for most of my school, room, and board, which was amazing because Trinity University is not a university my family could have ever afforded for me to attend. The internship came with a promise from us that each of us would teach in a lower income school/district in San Antonio for two years after we graduated (with an added bonus for those first two years of teaching)! Mother and I splurged and went out for a nice dinner that night, with Mother telling me she always knew I was going to become a teacher and how proud she was of me. She was always my biggest encourager---believing in me when I wasn't able to, sometimes----at least until Dave came along to become the best husband in the world. 

Trinity University was, and still is, one of the biggest Godsends in my life. It's where I met some of the best friends in my entire life (42 years later, and we still can't get enough of one another), and it's where I found out that, in order to get a minor in Music, I was going to have to compose a piece of music in Music Theory 2. Ummm....this is not what I signed up for. I could already conduct music (I think my dad, who was a lifelong band director, taught us how to do that when we were little girls while my mother was trying to teach us to play piano), but compose music??? Yikes! Let's just suffice it to say that the grade I got in that class was the sole reason I do not have a higher GPA on my transcript. But lo and behold---right about that time I was trying to finish that semester of Music Theory 2---a senior friend of ours at Trinity asked me if I was interested in working at a camp outside of Dallas for that summer after my freshman year for people aged 6 - 60 who had any type of physical or cognitive disability. I'll just suffice it to say I came back after that summer, walked in to Dr. John Moore's office in the education department (where I was also now working for 10-12 hours a week), and told Dr. Moore I wanted to change my degree to Special Education (and I also continued working at that amazing camp for 5 years where I met some more of the best friends in the world and learned so much about advocating for the rights of people with disabilities).
 
I taught special education in San Antonio and then in Dallas (where Dave and I met, fell in love with dancing and each other, and got married). Then Dave's job took us out to New Mexico, and I was blessed to be able to go back to school full time to get a Masters degree in Counseling and Educational Psychology. What fun to get to be a full-time student (and getting to substitute teach in every level of schooling in Alamogordo, New Mexico).
 
When next we moved to the panhandle of Florida, I became a guidance counselor who got to go in every classroom every week and teach lessons on character education. After about 10 years of doing that, I was further blessed to get hired as a principal at the best elementary school in the panhandle of Florida. The teachers, staff, students, parents, community, and I learned about relationships, love, and the beauty of education...together.  Eight years of getting to continue teaching later (just to teachers now, more often than to students), and having gotten my doctorate in education, Dave and I moved to Tucson, and another dream of mine was fulfilled---becoming a professor for teachers who wanted to become administrators---at the same time as getting hired to do professional development for teachers and administrators internationally. 

Twelve years later, and some of my work has slowed down a bit, but I still teach continuously at Grand Canyon University for all the Educational Leadership courses and a bunch of courses for teachers who want to get their masters degree in Special Education or to become curriculum specialists. And while I may not have my stuffed animals to teach, we also love teaching obedience to our Labrador Retrievers (who, unlike those stuffed animals of the past, do misbehave just a bit, at times). 

I thank God for the calling to teach. I thank God for all of the opportunities of a lifetime I have been afforded, and I simply pray that when I get to Heaven, God has some teaching and learning for me to do, because that has been Heaven on earth for me to do, and I don't want it to ever end. 

Just for today....maybe think about what you are called to do, and don't ignore the call! 
Happy Communicating, and I've missed blogging for the last few months!
Shelly
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