The Family of Teachers

Here's a bit of what I wrote yesterday:


The “Secret Life of Teachers” is really remarkable. Educators have a separate language, a distinct body of stories, and a niche of experience that only other teachers can understand. The taxation and joy of teaching is a connective sinew between educators that transcends place and time. Meet a retired teacher, and there is an instant connection. Meet a teacher from another country, and there is already a commonality. There is a global (if not universal) familial nature of educators.

I ruminated for a bit yesterday on this notion. Admittedly, my passions reside in the Humanities and Cultural Anthropology, so I might be a bit more apt to lean toward universal musings. Add to that my particular penchant for Whitman and the American Transcendentalists, and I suppose my thinking at times REALLY skews toward the nether-regions of big thoughts!

Nonetheless, I have always enjoyed the unspoken bonds that exist between teachers. When I meet someone who is a teacher or has been a teacher, there is a familiarity and bond that forms an undercurrent almost immediately. I've always enjoyed that.

I felt very much connected to this thinking as I imagined what it must be like to be a teacher in Omaha this week. I emailed Scott Butler, an assistant principal in Omaha and one of the nicest people I've met, to tell him that he and his teachers were in my mind this week as I thought about what it must be like to come together as a community of educators in service of a shaken community. Simply put, the macro community of educators is another family to which we belong and on which we can rely in moments of joy and trauma. It is a privilege not to be taken lightly!

Enjoy your weekends. Enjoy each other.