This short video offers a note of encouragement to all teachers who begin the journey again, now with a new group of young people. Each year, we teachers are one year older but our students never age! An eighth-grader is forever an eighth-grader. That’s why it may seem that the journey gets harder; we age, they don’t.
Schools today–and that means you–face a staggering question: how do we prepare our students to be citizens and workers in the global economy of the 21st century when we don’t know what the economy will look like at the end of next week? For me, the only possible answer is to keep people grounded in history. For people to be literate in a variety of fields and disciplines, with the broad critical thinking skills that history furnishes.
Don’t ever forget the awesome power you have to influence for the better. You may lose sight of it during the contentious day-to-day. We can be so overwhelmed with the job that we lose sight of the mission. There are America’s future doctors, writers, judges and scientists in front of you right now. They will work miracles in society someday and you will have inspired and taught them. The future is here, in your classroom, right now.