I look pensive in this photograph, or so I’m told. (I have no idea how I look when I’m pensive.) Maybe I’m reflecting on my years at Elon, which began by pausing by this bench to look at the campus that was about to become my second home.
Maybe I’m thinking about the fourteen years of teaching that led to this moment. That would explain the touch of amusement that’s in my expression. I would be remembering the day I stepped into an 8th grade classroom as a 21-year-old student teacher, believing I would teach just long enough to put my husband through graduate school, only to discover in the first five minutes that I had fallen in love, in love with this magical thing called teaching.
Those who know me, though, know that I don’t look back often. So this photograph may just as easily show me anticipating what there is yet to accomplish – this afternoon, this semester, this lifetime. My fascination has continued, fascination with how to teach so that every student has the opportunity to experience learning as life’s most engaging and exhilarating endeavor, as I do – and how to make it possible for every teacher to feel the magic that I still feel every time I step into a classroom.
Photo and accompanying personal statement were part of the faculty/staff portrait exhibit installed in Mooney Building in May 2010.
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