It was strange being back in Hillsdale for the Classical School Job Fair last week. I felt like I was back in Hillsdale as a student again. In some ways, Mr. Lotti, as I’ve been accustomed to being called for the last seven months, was replaced by Marcus, though I was still in a suit and tie. Standing by my school’s table in the Searle Center, I was no longer inundated with questions about the reason Jack London chose the word “perambulatory” instead of “walking with,” the purpose of learning what gerunds are and how to use them, or what Socrates means when he says a thing “does not become because it is becoming, but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes.” Though, admittedly, these are good questions.
I was instead flooded with questions regarding my experience as a first-year teacher, the role a faculty community plays in my day-to-day life, whether I have second thoughts about teaching as a career, and how teaching has changed or affected my thoughts about education, especially an education like Hillsdale’s.
These questions from college students sparked in me a desire to explore and explain some reflections from a first-year teacher and, more importantly, a young alumnus, about teaching, education, sacrifice, and the love and labor of Hillsdale College.
I graduated with a degree in English and a job lined up teaching English and history at a charter school in Texas. I’m seven months in, and the only way I can describe it is exhilarating, exhausting, fulfilling, and the single toughest learning curve of my life. I have been a student for most of my life; learning how to be on the other side of the classroom has been difficult and rewarding in ways I could not have expected.
If I had to mention just one notable thing, the mastery one has to have to teach something even as simple as a poem is remarkable. I always try to have “the end in mind” in my planning. Ideally, my students walk out of my class asking questions about nature, literature, language, and friendship. Some of the time, they do. If I am really lucky, conversations go beyond class, into the hallway, the lunch table, the outdoor pick-up line, the dinner table, their individual lives. Poems and novels, conversations and questions ideally seep into their lives.
This does not always happen, however. Sometimes, lesson plans fall flat. Questions lead nowhere. Conversations stagnate. Students are not engaged. The list could go on. I almost always realize my mistakes in the classroom in retrospect, but why? Why am I most prepared to begin once I’ve already finished?
The question I keep coming around to is this: why do I feel that this is the case for my Hillsdale education as well?
In the months following graduation, I wondered how to express to friends of mine who had not graduated the feelings I had regarding my time at Hillsdale coming to an end. I wanted them to know what I knew now that I was gone, but I came to realize that you cannot truly know the end of a thing until you, well, experience the end of that thing.
I say all this having many memories, few regrets, and according to some people my school interviewed, a “reputation,” whatever that means, from my own time at Hillsdale. These words I have before you here should not be taken as a list of things I wish I had known as a freshman, nor should they be taken as a way you have to spend your time at Hillsdale. Take these words rather as the closest this young alumnus can get to a full expression of the love and gratitude I believe all people should owe, in some way, to this institution.
Ultimately, you cannot know the value of your education unless you have the “end” of it in mind, which can really only happen once you have experienced that end. However, I believe the moment you realize this, whether you have finished or not, your education in some way begins again with a greater capaciousness than before. This greater capacity is of utmost importance. It enables one to learn to love in the moment with full knowledge of the end, making your education never truly end, only deepen with time.
All in all, I simply thank God every day for the love and labor of Hillsdale College, and I hope this inspires you to do the same. Be well and do good work.