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The True Teaching Tradition

 

Academic Exchange Quarterly

The following article was published in the Academic Exchange Quarterly during my tenure with the journal as copy editor. Publication information is listed at the end of the essay.

 

My niece attends Canadochly Elementary School in East Prospect, Pennsylvania, the same elementary school that I attended from 1960 to 1966. This fascinates her. Although her father, eight years my junior, also attended the same school, I seem to her a generation removed, and knowing that I walked the same halls as she does each weekday is, I think, her first connection with a sense of history, a sense of place.

This past spring, my sixth grade teacher Mrs. Long passed away. My mother told me the news, saying, "She always asked, whenever she saw me, how you were doing." I think I have only seen Mrs. Long once since attending her class in 1966, and that was when, recognizing me in a local store the summer after I graduated from high school, she asked how I was doing and what my plans for the future were.

The summer of my 15th high school reunion, I stopped by the home of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Bailey, who had married the mother of one of my friends from high school. When Mr. Bailey opened the door, and I introduced myself and my wife, he knew immediately who I was, welcomed me inside, and we talked about other students who had left the area and that neither of us had seen in years (some of whom I had forgotten until he reminded me).

Mrs. Grove, Mrs. Leiphart, Mrs. Gurtizen, Mrs. Carr (and Mrs. Payne, the wife of the school superintendent, who substituted for Mrs. Carr when Mrs. Carr became ill early in the year and who is the only teacher who, when I left her class, I cried at leaving, secretly to myself because fifth grade boys don't cry), each of these teachers influenced me and molded me into the person I am today. When I stand in the classroom, they, and the many teachers who followed them, stand with me, and it is my privilege to pass on to my students something of what they shared with me.

To all of the teachers who have ever shared with me their love, their passion for learning, their knowledge and wisdom, thank you. This is why I teach.

 

Bill Stifler
Copy Editor
Academic Exchange Quarterly. 2.2 (1998).