To the Editor:
When I was in public education, I did my best to recruit honor students, especially senior high boys, to consider teaching as a career. I was looking for candidates who had the stuff to make it in law, medicine, business, and engineering, not students who chose to teach because requirements to enter teaching were minimal.
I wasn’t very successful. Several times it got a little scary for me to continue this little personal crusade of mine. One irate parent went directly to the superintendent to demand that I cease and desist my recruiting efforts on their honors student son whom she had every intention of making a heart surgeon out of, not a school teacher.
The key concern here was genteel poverty. I would offer up my example as one who was not collecting food stamps nor living in a project. During my 35 years in public education, I tutored, did counseling work, taught college night school, wrote op-ed pieces, and sold textbooks. Being a teacher helped me in all these endeavors to keep the wolf away from the door.
I entered the teaching field via the Ford Foundation who thought that liberal arts graduates from major universities should be encouraged to teach. I gave up two acceptances to law school and a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate school.
I returned to my alma mater for a 10-year reunion. Most of my former professors in the College of Liberal Arts were still on staff. There was a note of disappointment on the face of the department head who had been instrumental in getting me into law school when I told him that I had been teaching for 10 years and not practicing law.
Cape May – Governor Murphy says he doesn't know anything about the drones and doesn't know what they are doing but he does know that they are not dangerous. Does anyone feel better now?
