COLUMN: You never stop being a teacher

It has been a year since I left teaching, and I am often asked if I miss it. 

Of course I do. I miss the kids. 

I don’t miss much of anything else, though. I don’t miss faculty meetings and progress reports. I don’t miss having to tell young ladies to put down their cell phones and 15-year-old boys to tuck in their shirts. 

I don’t miss teenage drama, senioritis, ticket duty and  lockdown drills. (And I certainly don’t miss those COVID years of Zoom classrooms, wearing masks, wiping down desks and trying to keep all those high school hormones six feet apart.)

But I do miss the students. I miss being part of their daily lives, celebrating their successes and helping them navigate their challenges. 

You never stop being a teacher. 

If you embrace your work, your students will never forget you.  They won’t have to open their yearbooks 10 years from now to remember your name. 

If you do the job as you are entrusted, you can be the original influencer. You can prepare them for the world before you release them into society. 

My heart is happy. I have students who still text me every January 28 to wish me a “Happy National Kazoo Day.”  I would always order kazoos to celebrate, since it was invented in Macon.

It brings me joy that they still talk about all the times I told them a good journalist is “ubiquitous.” That means to be everywhere. I promised them that word would be on the SAT … and it was.

Her freshman year at Ole Miss, a former student texted to let me know “the word ubiquitous came in my microbiology class today and made me think of you.’’

Earlier this summer, I got emotional when another student, now in her junior year at the University of Georgia, sent me a heartfelt note about how much being part of my journalism class meant to her. “I’ve been listening to a podcast, and it encouraged its listeners to reach out to a teacher from the past, and you were the first person I thought of,’’ she said.

That’s the reward of being a teacher. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

 I still write letters of recommendation and notes of encouragement. An international student, whose parents live in Iran, is now at Mercer but stops by to see me almost every week. She told me she still keeps the  “Paper Plate Award” I gave her for her exceptional attitude and work ethic.

Even when I wasn’t so sure some of my kids were paying attention in class, they were. One would roll her eyes every December 7 because she knew I was going to give my annual lesson about the famous Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta in 1946. But, by the time she was a senior, she had taken it upon herself to do her own research on the Winecoff — the deadliest hotel fire in American history — and taught the class herself.

In many ways, the life lessons were just as important as  lectures on the stylebook or instructions on the rule of thirds. Those young people would practically keep score of the number of times I preached on the virtues of having a “Tide To Go” pen within reach for all those unexpected splashes and spills. I even started giving them to the seniors as graduation gifts.  

I was also proud that I made it a point to dress for success. No dress-down days for me. If they ever saw me in jeans and a T-shirt outside, it rocked their world.

One young man complimented me on my ties almost every day. He noticed the patterns and designs. I would explain why I selected it and it accentuated the other colors I wore.

On his last day as a senior, I brought one of my ties from home, gave it to him and taught him how to tie it.

Two years ago, on the first day of school, I passed around a bowl filled with seashells.

A few weeks earlier, those shells had been sunning on a beach in Florida. I was attracted to their shapes, sizes and swirls of colors. They had been smoothed by the sun, wind and tides. Some had a perfect indentation to run your finger or thumb in stressful moments.

My wife asked me what I planned to do with them. I said I was going to give them to my students.

I called it “shell therapy.’’ I told them to take one and hold it in the palm of their hand. They could keep it in their pockets or come by and get a shell whenever they needed one. 

Soon, they were helping calm the frazzled nerves of high school cheerleaders and being clutched by young men anxious about acne and algebra tests.

Last week, I got a text message from a young lady who was in that class. She was leaving the next day to start her freshman year at the University of Alabama.

She attached a photograph of her shell.

“I am moving into college tomorrow,’’ she wrote. “And I couldn’t forget my shell.’’

You never stop being a teacher.

Ed Grisamore taught journalism at Macon’s Stratford Academy from 2015-24.