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Like mother, like son
  
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Roxann and Tyler Thompson share a passion for working in the classroom
By JANET JOHNSON
Gering Courier
Does genetics play a role in whether one becomes an exceptional teacher? Or is the source of quality teaching yet another example of the age-old debate on nature or nurture?
In the case of veteran Gering High School English teacher Roxann Thompson and her son Tyler, who is early in his second year of teaching at the same school, it is largely a moot argument. The 24-year-old speech and English teacher has been generously endowed both in terms of his inheritance and upbringing.
The younger Thompson credits his mother for his fervent desire to become a teacher. “Our lives are just a dash between two dates,” he remembers someone telling him in college and then asking him how he was going to use his “dash” between birth and death.
“I knew I wanted to spend mine teaching,” he said.
Thompson first decided to pursue teaching as a career during his sophomore year at GHS. “My mom had a large part in my choice to become a teacher,” he said. “I saw her totally in love with what she did, that her eyes would sparkle when talking about Shakespeare or split infinitives. I knew that I wanted for me what she had.”
That unwavering enthusiasm and total commitment to the teaching profession is evident in her son as well. A number of students who were in one of his classes last year are now in his mother’s class and they return to tell him, “Mr. T., I know now why you are the way you are. It’s scary how much you and your mom are alike!”
He said he wasn’t surprised. “Well, I guess the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree,” he said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Aware of the degree to which he mirrors his mother’s teaching approach, the younger instructor believes he has helped to pave the way for a number of students to enter her teaching environment by having them in his classes during their first year of high school: “If anything, I think I prepare them for my mother’s teaching style: the rigor, the responsiveness.”
Only natural
It seems only natural that Thompson would follow his mother into her chosen profession just as she had been drawn to her father’s initial career. Les Jones, her father, taught history and coached at Mitchell High School and later Scottsbluff High School in the 1950s and early ’60s.
“My very first teacher was my father who regaled my brother and me with real life stories of his own childhood and adolescence, as well as numerous history lessons,” she said. “He continues to share these timeless stories with Tyler and me.”
Even though his mother thoroughly enjoyed having him in class for one year, her son was at first ambivalent about the experience.
“Tyler was my student in English 10, believe it or not, without any finagling on my part,” she said. “I loved having him as a student because it gave me a unique opportunity to see how my child conducted himself in the classroom.”
However, back then, her son had a slightly different view of the situation. “It certainly challenged me as a student because she knew, in a very intimate way, everything about me: What I was capable of, in what areas I excelled or struggled, etc,” he recalled. “I can remember her looking over one of my assignments for her class.
“She perused it, and after a few minutes remarked, ‘Well it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s definitely A work. But, really, Tyler, you can do much better. Quit being lazy, and do it again.’ ”
Now, looking back, he is “thankful for the push,” but at the time found it “extremely frustrating. Did my classmates have to endure this? No. They could get away with slacking, but not me,” he said.
The younger Thompson refers to his mother as “truly an ‘oracle at Delphi’ when it comes to dispensing useful advice about teaching. Most ‘trade secrets’ in teaching come from actual classroom experiences with real students. And Mom has a boatload of those.
“So, it is fitting that she would share those secrets with me. If you have the gift, why not give it away? Mom has certainly done that, and to my benefit,” he said.
An English teacher at GHS for more than 25 years, Roxann Thompson said that she does “offer him my motherly advice now and again. That advice might include how to approach a particular behavioral issue, how to prepare for a particular unit, or how to maximize professionalism.”
Yet she is quick to share the credit for her son’s success: “However, I am only one of his mentors. He was blessed to have had the tutelage of so many successful Gering teachers.”
The younger Thompson fully appreciates the debt he owes to the numerous teachers who had a part in his becoming the teacher he is today. “It’s been a trip teaching alongside my former teachers (Mr. Kugler, Mr. Johnson, Ms. Graslie, Mr. deMaranville, Mr. Smith, Mr. Salomon). I still struggle with calling them by their first names.
“To me, they will always be my high school teachers — the individuals that helped me realize I wanted to pursue a career in teaching,” he said. “And, so, I think it’s fitting that I address them as either ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms. So-and-So.’ It’s more respectful. They deserve that respect.”
According to his mother, there are a number of other key influences on Thompson’s career choice. “After having Mary Winn as his speech teacher, speech team coach and mock trial coach for four years, he was well on his way to following in her footsteps,” she said. The current GHS speech coach admits that he had dreamed of becoming his alma mater’s head speech coach since graduating from high school in 2004. Then, when Winn, the highly successful speech teacher and coach, retired in 2008, it coincided with Thompson’s graduation from Chadron State College.
“In addition,” his mother points out, “Tyler and Andy Stobel, GHS German and Speech II teacher, have been close friends since their early grade school years together at Community Christian School.”
There is “no doubt,” she maintains, that Stobel’s decision to pursue a teaching career had a strong impact on her son’s decision to become a teacher.
The veteran teacher thoroughly enjoys having her son teaching in the same building as she does.
“It has been a most unique and truly special opportunity. Both of us have loved the environment of Gering High School for years,” she said. “Tyler was a regular in the halls of GHS from the time he was in kindergarten. Now that he is a teacher in the same building where he virtually grew up, we often run into one another before school or between periods, as well as during the lunch hour. What fun it is to hear of his experiences throughout the day!”
Her route to classroom
While her son joining the Gering faculty appears to have been a natural progression, the elder Thompson followed a more circuitous route. Graduating from Scottsbluff High School in 1970, Thompson first attended the University of Wyoming for two years before transferring to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln where she majored in fashion merchandising.
Then, when the teaching bug bit, she came back west to earn a bachelor’s degree in education with a major in home economics and a minor in English at Chadron State College. Thompson student taught home economics at Sidney High School. Graduating mid-year, her first teaching position was to replace a teacher who resigned in December at Culbertson in central Nebraska.
By then the young teacher was dating her future husband, Mike Thompson, who was still in school at CSC, so she welcomed the chance to move west and teach at Dix High School, following a semester at Culbertson. The couple was planning an August 1978 wedding when the opportunity to teach English at Gering High presented itself.
They have lived in the valley the entire 31 years of their marriage, the first 12 years in Gering and the remaining years in Scottsbluff, where Mike has been employed as an insurance agent, currently by Valley Insurance, a subsidiary of Valley Bank in Gering.
During these years, Thompson devoted herself to teaching a wide range of English classes from American and British literature, Greek mythology, and advanced placement English literature and composition to business English, creative writing, mystery and science fiction and English potpourri.
While teaching this variety of courses, Roxann brings an elegance and creativity to her classroom which has made her a renowned and almost legendary teacher. A carry-over, no doubt, of her background in home economics, her room is tastefully appointed with candlesticks and attractive wall treatments. In addition, her business English students were not only taught the important features of business correspondence and grammatical conventions, Thompson saw to it that they were instructed in etiquette guidelines and appropriate dress to ensure that they would be confident and self-assured in the world of business.
A culminating activity for these students was attendance at a three-course luncheon at the Gering Civic Center with members of the valley’s business community. Most importantly, the veteran instructor has always taught and continues to teach all her students by graceful example whether by her warm-hearted, individualized notes to them on their birthdays and other important events and full-on interest in whatever they are sharing with her or the entire class to her always neat and stylish appearance and carefully nuanced attention to detail.
Thompson divides her teaching career at GHS into pre- and post-Tyler terms. In her first tenure from 1978-1985, she was Action Team (Spirit Squad) coach as well as an English teacher. In the spring of 1985, she resigned to stay home full-time when Tyler was born. She returned to the school to substitute when her son entered kindergarten, and beginning in January 1992, signed a contract for her second term of teaching at the high school. Currently she is instructor for four sections of Prep. English III, a college-preparatory course for juniors and seniors.
Changes for good, bad
Roxann Thompson has seen both beneficial and detrimental changes in the education profession since she began her career in 1977.
“As teaching has evolved over the last 25 years, I have seen improvements in time-saving devices, such as electronic grading systems and computer technology,” she said. “However, teachers in the 21st century face a variety of time-intensive responsibilities that add to the already daunting hours of grading papers.”
Educational preparation for new teachers has improved since she was an undergraduate, the veteran instructor believes.
“Tyler has had a smoother first two years of teaching than I did due, in part, to the fact that he had a full semester of professional block and a full semester of student teaching, with approximately nine weeks in the Chadron Middle School and nine weeks in the Chadron High School.”
In comparison, she said, “My last fall semester at CSC was divided into nine weeks of professional block and approximately nine weeks of student teaching.”
According to the veteran teacher, changes in the college preparation of teachers have reaped great benefits especially in the case of her son.
“Last fall, my student teacher, Nathaniel Watkins, and I spent 90 minutes in one of Tyler’s Speech I classes and watched Tyler teach the opening segment of his ’60s unit for informative speech,” she said. “I actually had the opportunity to see my son interact with his students, use the Smart Board in a variety of fascinating ways, and even do Chubby Checker’s version of the twist with his class.”
Both teachers appreciate the “special pluses” of teaching in the same building. For the elder Thompson, “it has been such a treat to share ideas for teaching strategies, to relate funny or frustrating moments in the classroom, to see him develop professionally, and to even observe him teaching his own students.”
Her son also also can see no downside to teaching with his mother, saying there is nothing like “… the benefit of having a colleague who has a vested interest in your success in your first years of teaching, arguably the most important years in the career of a teacher, as it is in the first five years that you decide whether or not to be a ‘lifer,’” he said. “So to have someone committed to you seeing it through is reassuring. It’s nice.”
Having a teaching colleague in his corner as a parent as well as member of the same department offers a unique opportunity “to exchange ideas, commiserate, and grow professionally,” the younger Thompson said. His mother’s wise and calming influence became especially crucial near the end of his first year of teaching.
“By the end of last school year, when teaching burnout often strikes, Tyler was entertaining thoughts of pursuing law school,” his mother said. “While his father and I both believe that Tyler would make an excellent attorney, we know he is a talented teacher; in addition, we know how much he enjoys working with teenagers and influencing their lives in positive ways.”
So the Thompsons were relieved to note that “by the middle of summer, Tyler found his heart yearning again to be back in the classroom.”
Sharing the same friendly smile and outgoing personality, it is not surprising that the mother and son teachers share similar joys regarding their joint profession.
“I love the kids,” he said emphatically. “A day doesn’t go by where they don’t amaze me with their wit, their intellect or their resiliency. They aren’t afraid to share their minds and their hearts with you.”
Mrs. Thompson’s greatest joys in the profession are found in the same place, with students: “…. the opportunity to impact the lives of students for more than just the short term: the thrill of seeing students grow in their knowledge, wisdom, and discernment; the special camaraderie that develops when students and teachers work hard together to meet educational goals; the fun of working with and learning from teenagers — they are so bright, so inquisitive, and so entertaining,” she said.
Even though students are the source of the pair’s satisfaction and enjoyment of teaching, they can also be the focus of their concern.
According to the elder Thompson, “Students of the 21st century are facing unprecedented peer pressure and temptations to dabble in drugs and destructive behaviors of all kinds, as well as difficult home lives.
“As teachers, we hurt with our students when they run afoul of these incredible temptations, as well as when they’re battling difficult situations at home.”
However, the younger Thompson seems to relish the challenge of helping students become all they wish to be.
“They are incredibly vulnerable and they look to you to provide reassurance that their lives have meaning and will amount to something,” he said. “I love being able to instill in them the confidence that comes from public speaking, the confidence that they do have the skills to be special, unique, and difference-makers. All it takes is hard work and resolve.”
A ‘lifer’ in schools
This might explain the direction the younger Thompson believes his career may one day lead.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be a ‘lifer.’ Perhaps, though, in the future, I would leave the classroom to pursue a position in administration, where I could truly affect education where it matters most: at the level of policy, which in turn affects all students and teachers,” he said.
However, it is unlikely that Thompson will be leaving the classroom any time soon. The young teacher jokes about what drew him to teaching in the first place: “It just suited me: I like to talk, and what other job allows you to do that all day long, all year long?”
On a more serious note, he adds, “I realized the impact that my teachers had had on me, and I desire to make that kind of a difference with my life, my career.”
The elder Thompson affirms her son’s statement, saying, “He and I both believe that he has been called to this profession and that he was destined to become a teacher.”
In addition to the enjoyment of dealing with teenagers in a formative stage of their lives, she also highlights “the joy of working with colleagues who share your ups and downs with you and continue to offer their love and encouragement, as well as their professional expertise, and the attendant mental stimulation that comes from continuing to learn new ideas” on an ongoing basis year after year.
Lastly, “teaching offers the unique opportunity to form life-long friendships with students and fellow teachers.”
She chuckles and adds, “My kid is now my colleague – is that wild or what?”
In the case of veteran Gering High School English teacher Roxann Thompson and her son Tyler, who is early in his second year of teaching at the same school, it is largely a moot argument. The 24-year-old speech and English teacher has been generously endowed both in terms of his inheritance and upbringing.
The younger Thompson credits his mother for his fervent desire to become a teacher. “Our lives are just a dash between two dates,” he remembers someone telling him in college and then asking him how he was going to use his “dash” between birth and death.
“I knew I wanted to spend mine teaching,” he said.
Thompson first decided to pursue teaching as a career during his sophomore year at GHS. “My mom had a large part in my choice to become a teacher,” he said. “I saw her totally in love with what she did, that her eyes would sparkle when talking about Shakespeare or split infinitives. I knew that I wanted for me what she had.”
That unwavering enthusiasm and total commitment to the teaching profession is evident in her son as well. A number of students who were in one of his classes last year are now in his mother’s class and they return to tell him, “Mr. T., I know now why you are the way you are. It’s scary how much you and your mom are alike!”
He said he wasn’t surprised. “Well, I guess the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree,” he said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Aware of the degree to which he mirrors his mother’s teaching approach, the younger instructor believes he has helped to pave the way for a number of students to enter her teaching environment by having them in his classes during their first year of high school: “If anything, I think I prepare them for my mother’s teaching style: the rigor, the responsiveness.”
Only natural
It seems only natural that Thompson would follow his mother into her chosen profession just as she had been drawn to her father’s initial career. Les Jones, her father, taught history and coached at Mitchell High School and later Scottsbluff High School in the 1950s and early ’60s.
“My very first teacher was my father who regaled my brother and me with real life stories of his own childhood and adolescence, as well as numerous history lessons,” she said. “He continues to share these timeless stories with Tyler and me.”
Even though his mother thoroughly enjoyed having him in class for one year, her son was at first ambivalent about the experience.
“Tyler was my student in English 10, believe it or not, without any finagling on my part,” she said. “I loved having him as a student because it gave me a unique opportunity to see how my child conducted himself in the classroom.”
However, back then, her son had a slightly different view of the situation. “It certainly challenged me as a student because she knew, in a very intimate way, everything about me: What I was capable of, in what areas I excelled or struggled, etc,” he recalled. “I can remember her looking over one of my assignments for her class.
“She perused it, and after a few minutes remarked, ‘Well it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s definitely A work. But, really, Tyler, you can do much better. Quit being lazy, and do it again.’ ”
Now, looking back, he is “thankful for the push,” but at the time found it “extremely frustrating. Did my classmates have to endure this? No. They could get away with slacking, but not me,” he said.
The younger Thompson refers to his mother as “truly an ‘oracle at Delphi’ when it comes to dispensing useful advice about teaching. Most ‘trade secrets’ in teaching come from actual classroom experiences with real students. And Mom has a boatload of those.
“So, it is fitting that she would share those secrets with me. If you have the gift, why not give it away? Mom has certainly done that, and to my benefit,” he said.
An English teacher at GHS for more than 25 years, Roxann Thompson said that she does “offer him my motherly advice now and again. That advice might include how to approach a particular behavioral issue, how to prepare for a particular unit, or how to maximize professionalism.”
Yet she is quick to share the credit for her son’s success: “However, I am only one of his mentors. He was blessed to have had the tutelage of so many successful Gering teachers.”
The younger Thompson fully appreciates the debt he owes to the numerous teachers who had a part in his becoming the teacher he is today. “It’s been a trip teaching alongside my former teachers (Mr. Kugler, Mr. Johnson, Ms. Graslie, Mr. deMaranville, Mr. Smith, Mr. Salomon). I still struggle with calling them by their first names.
“To me, they will always be my high school teachers — the individuals that helped me realize I wanted to pursue a career in teaching,” he said. “And, so, I think it’s fitting that I address them as either ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms. So-and-So.’ It’s more respectful. They deserve that respect.”
According to his mother, there are a number of other key influences on Thompson’s career choice. “After having Mary Winn as his speech teacher, speech team coach and mock trial coach for four years, he was well on his way to following in her footsteps,” she said. The current GHS speech coach admits that he had dreamed of becoming his alma mater’s head speech coach since graduating from high school in 2004. Then, when Winn, the highly successful speech teacher and coach, retired in 2008, it coincided with Thompson’s graduation from Chadron State College.
“In addition,” his mother points out, “Tyler and Andy Stobel, GHS German and Speech II teacher, have been close friends since their early grade school years together at Community Christian School.”
There is “no doubt,” she maintains, that Stobel’s decision to pursue a teaching career had a strong impact on her son’s decision to become a teacher.
The veteran teacher thoroughly enjoys having her son teaching in the same building as she does.
“It has been a most unique and truly special opportunity. Both of us have loved the environment of Gering High School for years,” she said. “Tyler was a regular in the halls of GHS from the time he was in kindergarten. Now that he is a teacher in the same building where he virtually grew up, we often run into one another before school or between periods, as well as during the lunch hour. What fun it is to hear of his experiences throughout the day!”
Her route to classroom
While her son joining the Gering faculty appears to have been a natural progression, the elder Thompson followed a more circuitous route. Graduating from Scottsbluff High School in 1970, Thompson first attended the University of Wyoming for two years before transferring to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln where she majored in fashion merchandising.
Then, when the teaching bug bit, she came back west to earn a bachelor’s degree in education with a major in home economics and a minor in English at Chadron State College. Thompson student taught home economics at Sidney High School. Graduating mid-year, her first teaching position was to replace a teacher who resigned in December at Culbertson in central Nebraska.
By then the young teacher was dating her future husband, Mike Thompson, who was still in school at CSC, so she welcomed the chance to move west and teach at Dix High School, following a semester at Culbertson. The couple was planning an August 1978 wedding when the opportunity to teach English at Gering High presented itself.
They have lived in the valley the entire 31 years of their marriage, the first 12 years in Gering and the remaining years in Scottsbluff, where Mike has been employed as an insurance agent, currently by Valley Insurance, a subsidiary of Valley Bank in Gering.
During these years, Thompson devoted herself to teaching a wide range of English classes from American and British literature, Greek mythology, and advanced placement English literature and composition to business English, creative writing, mystery and science fiction and English potpourri.
While teaching this variety of courses, Roxann brings an elegance and creativity to her classroom which has made her a renowned and almost legendary teacher. A carry-over, no doubt, of her background in home economics, her room is tastefully appointed with candlesticks and attractive wall treatments. In addition, her business English students were not only taught the important features of business correspondence and grammatical conventions, Thompson saw to it that they were instructed in etiquette guidelines and appropriate dress to ensure that they would be confident and self-assured in the world of business.
A culminating activity for these students was attendance at a three-course luncheon at the Gering Civic Center with members of the valley’s business community. Most importantly, the veteran instructor has always taught and continues to teach all her students by graceful example whether by her warm-hearted, individualized notes to them on their birthdays and other important events and full-on interest in whatever they are sharing with her or the entire class to her always neat and stylish appearance and carefully nuanced attention to detail.
Thompson divides her teaching career at GHS into pre- and post-Tyler terms. In her first tenure from 1978-1985, she was Action Team (Spirit Squad) coach as well as an English teacher. In the spring of 1985, she resigned to stay home full-time when Tyler was born. She returned to the school to substitute when her son entered kindergarten, and beginning in January 1992, signed a contract for her second term of teaching at the high school. Currently she is instructor for four sections of Prep. English III, a college-preparatory course for juniors and seniors.
Changes for good, bad
Roxann Thompson has seen both beneficial and detrimental changes in the education profession since she began her career in 1977.
“As teaching has evolved over the last 25 years, I have seen improvements in time-saving devices, such as electronic grading systems and computer technology,” she said. “However, teachers in the 21st century face a variety of time-intensive responsibilities that add to the already daunting hours of grading papers.”
Educational preparation for new teachers has improved since she was an undergraduate, the veteran instructor believes.
“Tyler has had a smoother first two years of teaching than I did due, in part, to the fact that he had a full semester of professional block and a full semester of student teaching, with approximately nine weeks in the Chadron Middle School and nine weeks in the Chadron High School.”
In comparison, she said, “My last fall semester at CSC was divided into nine weeks of professional block and approximately nine weeks of student teaching.”
According to the veteran teacher, changes in the college preparation of teachers have reaped great benefits especially in the case of her son.
“Last fall, my student teacher, Nathaniel Watkins, and I spent 90 minutes in one of Tyler’s Speech I classes and watched Tyler teach the opening segment of his ’60s unit for informative speech,” she said. “I actually had the opportunity to see my son interact with his students, use the Smart Board in a variety of fascinating ways, and even do Chubby Checker’s version of the twist with his class.”
Both teachers appreciate the “special pluses” of teaching in the same building. For the elder Thompson, “it has been such a treat to share ideas for teaching strategies, to relate funny or frustrating moments in the classroom, to see him develop professionally, and to even observe him teaching his own students.”
Her son also also can see no downside to teaching with his mother, saying there is nothing like “… the benefit of having a colleague who has a vested interest in your success in your first years of teaching, arguably the most important years in the career of a teacher, as it is in the first five years that you decide whether or not to be a ‘lifer,’” he said. “So to have someone committed to you seeing it through is reassuring. It’s nice.”
Having a teaching colleague in his corner as a parent as well as member of the same department offers a unique opportunity “to exchange ideas, commiserate, and grow professionally,” the younger Thompson said. His mother’s wise and calming influence became especially crucial near the end of his first year of teaching.
“By the end of last school year, when teaching burnout often strikes, Tyler was entertaining thoughts of pursuing law school,” his mother said. “While his father and I both believe that Tyler would make an excellent attorney, we know he is a talented teacher; in addition, we know how much he enjoys working with teenagers and influencing their lives in positive ways.”
So the Thompsons were relieved to note that “by the middle of summer, Tyler found his heart yearning again to be back in the classroom.”
Sharing the same friendly smile and outgoing personality, it is not surprising that the mother and son teachers share similar joys regarding their joint profession.
“I love the kids,” he said emphatically. “A day doesn’t go by where they don’t amaze me with their wit, their intellect or their resiliency. They aren’t afraid to share their minds and their hearts with you.”
Mrs. Thompson’s greatest joys in the profession are found in the same place, with students: “…. the opportunity to impact the lives of students for more than just the short term: the thrill of seeing students grow in their knowledge, wisdom, and discernment; the special camaraderie that develops when students and teachers work hard together to meet educational goals; the fun of working with and learning from teenagers — they are so bright, so inquisitive, and so entertaining,” she said.
Even though students are the source of the pair’s satisfaction and enjoyment of teaching, they can also be the focus of their concern.
According to the elder Thompson, “Students of the 21st century are facing unprecedented peer pressure and temptations to dabble in drugs and destructive behaviors of all kinds, as well as difficult home lives.
“As teachers, we hurt with our students when they run afoul of these incredible temptations, as well as when they’re battling difficult situations at home.”
However, the younger Thompson seems to relish the challenge of helping students become all they wish to be.
“They are incredibly vulnerable and they look to you to provide reassurance that their lives have meaning and will amount to something,” he said. “I love being able to instill in them the confidence that comes from public speaking, the confidence that they do have the skills to be special, unique, and difference-makers. All it takes is hard work and resolve.”
A ‘lifer’ in schools
This might explain the direction the younger Thompson believes his career may one day lead.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be a ‘lifer.’ Perhaps, though, in the future, I would leave the classroom to pursue a position in administration, where I could truly affect education where it matters most: at the level of policy, which in turn affects all students and teachers,” he said.
However, it is unlikely that Thompson will be leaving the classroom any time soon. The young teacher jokes about what drew him to teaching in the first place: “It just suited me: I like to talk, and what other job allows you to do that all day long, all year long?”
On a more serious note, he adds, “I realized the impact that my teachers had had on me, and I desire to make that kind of a difference with my life, my career.”
The elder Thompson affirms her son’s statement, saying, “He and I both believe that he has been called to this profession and that he was destined to become a teacher.”
In addition to the enjoyment of dealing with teenagers in a formative stage of their lives, she also highlights “the joy of working with colleagues who share your ups and downs with you and continue to offer their love and encouragement, as well as their professional expertise, and the attendant mental stimulation that comes from continuing to learn new ideas” on an ongoing basis year after year.
Lastly, “teaching offers the unique opportunity to form life-long friendships with students and fellow teachers.”
She chuckles and adds, “My kid is now my colleague – is that wild or what?”
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