A CURMUDGEON'S DOTAGE.

Change, Change All we ever seem to talk about anymore is change. Oh, the administration might call it progress, innovation, or even transition, but we know it is all about change. In the twenty-five plus years that I have been teaching there has been a lot of change. Changes in technology. Changes in methodology. Changes in content and curriculum. Changes in students (a lot of changes in students).

As you might imagine, (especially if you read my column in the Fall issue of this journal) I do not particularly like change (even when we call it innovation) and am especially disturbed by much of the "progress" that has taken place in education over the past decade or so. In spite of all the change, there is at least one important constant.

The constant is one of the reassuring beacons of my career. My role as teacher has not changed. From the day I began until present and for as long as I manage to stand before a classroom (yes, I still teach live students through the ancient lecture method), my job will be to teach. My first full-time job was teaching history at a middle school. My principal told me before school began that my job was to teach. "If they don't learn it, then you didn't teach it," she told me more than twenty years ago, and I still believe it to be true today. She went on to tell me that I had to "meet them wherever they are on the road and take them as far as I can in the time I have with them."

Regardless of the changes we have faced in technology, methodology, and our students, my role as "teacher" remains the same. Regardless of their reading level, writing level, social skills, or whatever else I might find to complain about my responsibility is to teach them. In the face of the whirlwinds of change this is a constant that continues to bring me joy and define me as a teacher; I trust it does for many others as well.

Link Hullar Kingwood College 

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