The Calling

I have had this idea in my head for a long time, and I have avoided writing it until now. I’ve been feeling it’s premature to put it down and put it out. But now I am starting to realize that this idea will evolve over time. Or maybe I’ll just be expressing it differently. There’s no reason to hold off.

I’ve had a calling to be a teacher all my life. Sometimes I forget it, because I thought the profession seemed out of reach for me. Or I avoided it because I feared I wouldn’t be able to stand it. My beloved spouse tells me that I have always said I wanted to be a teacher, even though I don’t remember telling her every year. She assures me I do.

My beloved father, may he rest in peace, said that teaching is the noblest profession, especially when the teacher is a scholar. He thought he would have been happiest if he had been a History teacher. His most inspiring teacher was a History teacher he had in high school. Dad went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn and graduated in approximately 1946. This teacher would have students form a crowd around him in the cafeteria, just to hear him talk extemporaneously. He won Teacher of the Year award in the school so many times that they had to change the rule to prevent consecutive awards, just because of him. That’s how good he must have been. So Dad said that out of a sense of survival and security, he went into business rather than pursuing his passion. And now I wonder why he thought a teacher’s salary was so intolerable.

After Dad pretty much stopped working and was mostly retired, he volunteered with Literacy Partners. It’s an organization that teaches adults to read. Dad taught classes in Harlem. He loved it so much. His students loved him. After he died, the organization created the Harry Reingold Volunteer Teacher award for excellent teachers. (See link about the state resolution which describes Dad’s life a bit more.) He brought novels and poems he loved to his students, and they loved reading them and talking about them. Dad told me stories of people and how they cleverly got by and often hid their illiteracy from the world. Needless to say, their lives improved from being able to read or read better.

I feel a joy inside me which reflects the joy my father would be feeling now if he were alive to see me becoming a teacher. I’m sure all my departed loved ones would be happy, too, but it was Dad who spoke so admiringly about the profession.

I spent 34 years in the computer programming and information technology profession. I enjoyed it and learned a lot, and it was rewarding to build and maintain software and systems. It’s a good exercise for the mind, a place to learn a variety of skills, and an opportunity to be useful. I decided I’ve built enough systems, and it’s time for me to build some humans.