Curtain Call
Do you know when it’s time to move on?
Automatic transmission in cars removed the artful skill of driving. No longer do we need to listen carefully to the sweet-spot sounds of an engine requiring a change of gears. There is also a sweet-spot in a clutch where one teeters and can remain in the same gear or move toward the next shift. I have heard that airplanes have evolved in the same direction. Neophyte pilots have the luxury of following the automated readings and flight plans. Old pilots argue that is not really flying a plane; veteran pilots maintain that there is an art to flying a plane manually and listening plays a significant role in the calibration decisions. Veering the final chapters of my career, I started to realize that I was functioning in auto-pilot; I was using automatic transmission and not able to hear the engine roaring to change gears.
When I began my career in education, I was driving forward as one drives a standard, or a “stick shift” as we used to say. I was able to hear when the gears needed to shift up or down and I found joy in the shifting. As mastery of the craft increased, the automation set in. I was incredibly effective, consistent and diagnostic but, not only were less shifts happening, the joy of the shift was diminishing. I could feel the apathy increasing but my sincere altruism to help students and my love for each of them kept me going. And then I pictured something, in the movie of my mind.
I was sitting on a beach in Brazil where Disney-like turquoise waters panned my entire view. It was summer vacation and I had accompanied my husband on a business trip by using his accumulated aero-points. Randy was scaling a cliff behind us to reach a beach-side pub where he could obtain some beverages to cool us down. Alone, I let my mind wander.
Before I describe the vision my mind conjured up, I need to regress and explain one consuetude of my teaching practise. Every day, at the beginning of each theatre class, I exercised what I nicknamed “the attendance circle”. I never, ever, had students sit in traditional rows. I believe everyone has a place in a circle. Every face is seen. Every voice is heard. I would go through the roll call, asking each student to answer a question of the day. Sometimes the question married the lesson, sometimes it was to promote creative thinking and other times, it served the purpose of getting to know one another better.
“If you could have a super-power, what would it be?”
“When I say Victorian Era, what images come to mind?”
“Are you a pen or pencil person?”
“If you could be anywhere else right now, where would you like to be?”
“What was your favourite childhood toy?” (a great one for the Children’s theatre unit!)
“Where would you like to travel to?” Brazil.
And so here I was, satisfying my curiosity about Brazil and reflecting upon my students during the attendance circle. I remembered a little gaggle of my students from one particular cohort and chuckled at the memories associated with them. I placed the images of them to the left of my beach chair. Then I remembered other students, other memories. They were each added to the attendance circle that continued around and out to the water. Scores of beloved students multiplied further and further into the water; the circle swelled as my heart swelled with my affection for each of them and for the lessons they taught me. I was surprised how many of them there were in my head and heart after 20 some years of teaching. I was, perhaps, 45 minutes, frozen in this vision. Then the memories slowed down and I saw that the circle was complete. It extended as far out into the water as I could see and there was no more room in the circle.
My eyes welled up with tears when I realized my career was complete. The vision I concocted on that Brazilian beach was the engine of my mind and I was now listening. The tears were sourced, not from regret or sadness, but from abundance. I felt so grateful for the opportunity we had to share art together and for the gifts of learning they gave me in return. Endings don’t have to be sad.
My husband returned with drinks in hand, to see my tear stained face. After assuring him they were not sad tears, I smiled at the puzzled look on his face as I imagined the commentary that must be occurring in his thoughts. “Women. Strange creatures of paradox. Tears of happiness.”
At that moment, I began organizing an exit plan. In three years, I would resign.
In June 2019, that same husband, in cahoots with my daughter, helped me commemorate a career well executed by throwing me a surprise retirement party. My staff had just hosted a lovely gathering for me where I had the opportunity to celebrate with my colleagues and to thank my various mentors and influencers who shaped the pedagogy of my practise. But my husband's soiree was the opportunity to experience my Brazil vision in reality.
He invited my students. Over 200 graduates attended. There were representatives from my first year of teaching sporting hints of emerging grey and incipient wrinkles, through to the most recent who were feeling pretty grown up being legally able to drink with their teacher watching. There were also a handful of colleagues who, throughout the years, had crossed over from co-workers to enduring, supportive allies who held me up during the times when I couldn’t. As I stood up on a chair to thank them all for coming, I paused, speechless for a moment. Here was my vision. I recounted my Brazilian envisage to the completed circle. My heart remembered each matured face. At the end of my first year of teaching, I worried I didn’t have the capacity to love another cohort as much. Now, perched on this chair, I realized I did. My heart had the capacity for a league of thousands and now it was full.
My final attendance circle question was now answered.
“What was the reason you kept teaching all those years?”
They were my reason.
My foot stepped on the clutch and I shifted forward to the next gear.
