As she begins her final year of teaching, middle school teacher Pat Coles looks back on her career.

By Pat (KaspAr) Coles

I wonder how can I retire from the stimulating din of Newton Middle School's hallway gossip? How can I exist without the daily observations of children bouncing off locker walls, as they careen down our 1962 hallways? Will my hearing return, after I no longer hear the repetitive chant of my name 83 times a day: 'Mrs. Coles …'"

"My dad's printer needs a new cartridge, so I couldn't finish that project you assigned five weeks ago."

"I never received that assignment, I think I was absent that day.''

"It's in Mom's car and I'm at Dad's house this week.''

"I left my mockingbird study guide in Oklahoma. Grandma is mailing it.''

It all started that day I was asked to help the kindergarten teacher at Edward Rosewater School, located in South Omaha. My seventh grade teacher had noted that I was finishing my work quickly each day, so I was to be rewarded by going to the kinder-garten room to assist that teacher.

I was hooked from the beginning. Right up my 12-year-old spine went the teaching shiver of bonding with this funny little kid, so eager and sweet. He earnestly lisped his way through a poem about a cow! He was superb.
If that wasn't enough, I was the center of the students' attention as I read to them, and I realized fairly quickly that this was my idea of fun.

It was not so much the power one had leading these little people. It was the connecting with a precious open mind, trusting my words, my instructions.

This was not only an educational place, but a nurturing place, one where I could create a meaningful experience for little humans. The thrill of it all cast its mold. No doubt, I would become a teacher.

Some 29 years after my experiences in that small kindergarten classroom and hundreds of kids later, I anticipate my last year of teaching. It will be spent creating a safe, respectful room for my eighth graders.

Not a day passes that I, along with my three teammates, don't find something to laugh about, humor being the teachers' ultimate elixir.

Our eighth graders this past year were pleasant and helpful. They were concerned about homework overload, so I suggested they write to the Denver Post.

We read several articles about the purpose of homework. It was decided during class discussions that homework was necessary, here to stay, and time management was a goal for all. The Post published five of the students' letters.

Middle school students, as well as the parents of middle school children, are often burdened with too much work and too little time. The middle school student is neither child nor adult, which is why a teacher anchor is important.

This is what makes the true middle school teacher stick around. Nothing annoys me more than when an outsider says, "You teach what! Middle school, well someone has to do it." It is not a burden for us. It is what we want to do.

Recently, I heard one of my colleagues, Phyllis, speak to our teachers. She is retiring after 33 years in this school, always a bright energy in our building. She has led orchestras, language arts classes, task forces, and obtained two master's degrees.
It is unique people like Phyllis and my team who make this an honorable profession. We, as teachers, spend years not only educating students, but in a way unfolding human beings.

I am proud to see how some of the human beings I have taught have unfolded. Every once in a while, they walk into my room, these beings, sometimes years later, the finished product standing there and grinning, wondering if I will remember them. Sometimes I do. I see familiar eyes, mouth, and body language of someone I knew.

I've enjoyed teaching--being in the trenches, I call it. I've enjoyed the trenches of Omaha District 6; Craig, Colorado; McLean, Virginia; the District of Columbia; and Littleton, Colorado schools. I have learned from the children of suburbia and the inner city.

I have learned many things in my classroom, but perhaps the most important thing I learned is that some people can have a job they enjoy all their life.

I was one of those lucky ones. I have spent 29 years in a very warm place-the American classroom.When we stand in front of our students, I hope we remember teaching is a gift for students and us. Send them home with the love of poetry, history of America, the latest equation, the balance and beauty of the chemical table, and certainly with hope, self-respect, and worth. Everyone deserves a warm, safe place. 4

Pat Coles shares life with family and husband David, who completed his 32-year teaching career at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado. Her E-mail address is pcoles@lps.k12.co.us.

Editor's Note

As we begin a new publishing year, I'd like to mention some of the topics we anticipate covering this year.

Our October cover story looks at the links between low student performance and low-income schools and what can be done to lift these schools to higher achievement levels. Our story focuses on two school districts in Raleigh, North Carolina and LaCrosse, Wisconsin that are busing low-income kids to high-income schools and high-income kids to low-income schools in an effort to equalize educational opportunity for all students. Our story shows the progress that's been made--and the problems they've faced.

In November, we'll take a fresh look at parental involvement. Not surprisingly, there's a direct connection between parent involvement and student achievement. This story recounts some of the successful strategies employed by NEA members to increase parent involvement. Our cover story ties in with NEA's parent involvement ad campaign in conjunction with the Ad Council which will precede American Education Week.

We've already begun the research for our cover stories for the January issue and beyond. These include major feature stories about reading (tied in with NEA's Read Across America), special education, testing and accountability, and how the teaching profession has changed and where it's headed.

These, of course, are just the featured topics for the issues ahead. There's lots more to look forward to in other sections of NEA Today. Among the debate questions, for example is this one in next month's issue: Should staff that teach in tougher schools get higher pay?

And we'll be running some of your responses to these dilemmas: How do you rein in a class that's gotten out of control? And, what do you do when students tell you their personal problems?

Look for coverage of these and many other cutting edge topics in future issues.

Helping us tell these stories will be some of the more than 500 delegates to this year's Representative Assembly in Los Angeles who stopped by the NEA Today/RA Today workroom to tell us which topics they'd most like to discuss with NEA Today writers. We're going over the forms these delegates filled out now and will be contacting many of these members in the near future. And, if you have a story to tell, don't be shy about sending it along to neatoday@nea.org.
We look forward to hearing from you.