A Teacher's Legacy

Examiner column for October 1.

    George W. has been thinking about his legacy, and his departure is 16 months away. I have also been thinking of my more modest legacy as a public school teacher. Many of us baby boomers are within a few years of retiring from our current postions; what will be our legacies?

    Bush will, like his father and Bill Clinton, stay in the “game” by taking on favorite causes. In two years I will continue to teach writing on the college level. But I’ll no longer be getting up in the dark. It may not be “retirement,” but it will be a longer night’s sleep.

    How much do teachers affect students? Many of my students don’t even remember my name the following year. Younger siblings sometimes turn up in my class and I ask: “ Didn’t I teach your brother George?” They return later with, “George thinks he might have had you for English, but he isn’t sure. He wasn’t that good at English.”

    There are, of course, the students who remember you forever because you caught them at a time when whatever you were teaching meshed with whatever their brains were ready to absorb. Much of a teacher’s effect has to do with the student’s readiness and not the teacher’s skill.

    Yet I find myself noting, “This is the second to last Back-to-School-Night,” or “I will only teach “1984” one more time. There is the wistful moment when I think of the many years I have spoken to nervous parents in the fall and tried to reassure them, and the decades I have bonded with students over our mutual hatred of surveillance and government oversight. “One more time,” I think to myself, as I close my classroom door.

    Concurrent with this nostalgia is my realistic awareness that high school is four years long and that students’ memories are short. A colleague died 18 months ago and no one at Oakton ever mentions him anymore, even though he taught English there for more than 20 years.

    Retirees from our department are welcomed warmly when they come back as substitute teachers, but they, too, are aware that students don’t see them as veteran experts returning to do them a favor. They’re just “subs” in those classes.

    And so I think my legacy has to remain largely in my own consciousness since I can’t really depend on the school or students to remember me. I helped design a very popular interdisciplinary Advanced Placement course, “Senior Seminar,” that may or may not survive my departure. If it dies, I can’t assume it was a failure, since hundreds of students benefited from it over the years.

    Similarly, my effect on students’ love of theatre or reading may very well go unacknowledged by the student and by me. Perhaps they now buy tickets to the Shakespeare Theatre because they went for the first time in my class. I will never know.

    For many of us, our legacies may be virtually invisible, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There must be a special place where teachers’ accomplishments live on. I know my own teachers live on in me.

Erica Jacobs soldiers on at Oakton High School and George Mason University. Email her at ejacob1@gmu.edu.

Comments

[Liz]

Let's see...

-George Orwell is now one of my favorite authors.
-You wrote me a fantastic recommendation letter for Goucher.
-I entered Reflections and won third place because of your encouragement.
-I attended the Northern Virginia Writing Project.
-I entered more writing contests that year because of the opportunities in your class for creative writing, and I still have the copies with your comments.
-Seminar is one of the top three classes that I took in high school. Pat was up here the other day and we were discussing that class, two years later!

Don't worry about your legacy, Dr. Jacobs; it's been covered. :)

[Dr. Jacobs]

Liz, your comment was so sweet! Thank you. You have made my weekend.

[Bob F.]

With comments like Liz's your legacy is truly covered. I also think your advice to new teachers--about how even the students who appear to be not listening to you are still absorbing some of what is offered--applies to the issue of legacy. Much of your years of offerings are absorbed and amalgamated into the being of your students. Only some of this amalgamation is conscious--probably only a tiny bit--but your legacy, measured in impact-- is often much greater. One of the neat things, of course, is that your students go out into the world and interact with others so your legacy gets multiplied exponentially. Following the math and six degrees of separation logic, it might be safe to say that within the next 32 years there won't be a person in the U.S. (world?) who hasn't been slightly modified by your teaching. Pretty cool for a legacy.

[Bob F.]

An addendum to my comment:
...and all that impact without a troop surge!