If you have flown with me, you know I get nervous on flights. Not uncontrollably panicky or anything, I'm just a bit more on edge than usual. Anyway, I had a realization as we began initial descent. After my usual prayer (descent is always the scariest part for me), I told myself to trust the pilot. In an effort to rationalize, I was reminding myself how often he does this per day, etc. This was hard to do (I have difficulty trusting people I've never met or have no connection to). However, I soon told myself to trust his teachers. I know this is strange, but it was comforting to me. To think of the dozens of teachers that had prepared him for Flight School, and not to mention those that trained him for this flight. Somehow, it was easier to trust the professionals that had signed his recommendation for a Pilot's license than it was to trust him.
Ok, so that is the backstory. However, As the plane descended and even as I waited in the airport, I kept thinking about this moment in my thought process, and found it incredibly affirming. I haven't mentioned this to anyone, but the past couple of weeks have led to a miniature existential crisis. I'm a previous student who has graduated, a teacher who is not teaching at the moment, and an educator who hasn't stepped foot in a classroom in weeks. I'm not wanting pity, I'm just letting you know how happy I was to have this moment. Anyway, this moment gave me a great sense of affirmation as I face the beginning of my career. The role of teacher is not exactly prestigious. If we lived in the land of Lois Lowry's The Giver, our parents would tell us not to hope for the assignment. However, the pilot (a position that would be coveted in that world, as in ours) was only trustworthy because every educator along his path to Pilot taught him well and with integrity.
This leads to my conclusion, and indeed the point of the matter. Teachers are often bombarded with pressure. Parents pressure us to help their students succeed (often read "pass"), as if we were not already doing everything we could to help them do so. I often feel a twinge of remorse as I assign students disappointing grades, trying to find a way to turn that B into an A. But, this moment of affirmation as an educator was one that reminded me of the importance of the integrity required of our field. We want ever student to pass, graduate, succeed. But we must be careful to maintain the definition of success. Someday, some nervous traveler in an aircraft will be depending on a pilot, and will want to know that he earned his diploma and subsequent degrees. Someday, a parent in a hospital will depend on the accuracy of their interpreter to receive proper treatment for their child's injuries, and I want the foreign language seal that he earned on his high school diploma to mean something. The trust and confidence with which I consider myself endowed as an educator merits a few disappointing grades. This further affirms my belief in high standards