Yesterday I was at a former student's wedding. It was a beautiful affair. For me, to be invited to attend was one of the greatest gifts I have received as a teacher. Seriously. One of the greatest opportunities of teaching is the chance to be a force for good in a student's life and one of the greatest gifts we can receive is when a student lets you know you've made a difference. When over time they decide to share life events. Wow.

I've probably been to more than my fair share of former student events and I'm always greatly touched.

I guess I've also been thinking about things like this recently with my pending retirement and also since I've been interviewing potential students for my teacher education masters program. I got to enjoy one particular interview when I asked the candidate where they were currently working as a SWE. After they answered, I was able to reel off the names of four of my former students who are also working there.

That particular interview was really energizing. The others I did were as well. You have to get excited by the energy of these young CS people - most who spent a short time in industry but some applying right from college who are now anxious to enter the teaching workforce to make a difference in young people's lives.

Energizing to the point that I'll miss teaching them next year but not enough to make me forget that I really need to step back. Besides, I can probably teach them as an adjunct in their second year in the program :-).

So all this has me looking back and when I was talking to each program candidate, I make sure to talk to them about both the good and the bad of the profession. The good are in the relationships we build and how we can change, and literally save lives and often we do it by being ourselves and just by being decent human beings. Years ago, I was purchasing some hardware. I needed a Milwaukee hammer drill among other things. A former student's father was an executive at that company. He took my order and payment info. The tools arrived shortly later but no charge. I called him up and protested (I mean, I would have liked a small discount, but this was the whole deal). He said, "you don't pay for tools, you saved my kid's life." I was, and am very fond of this former student but I really didn't think I did anything special.

I'm hoping that current teachers reading this give themselves the time and space to appreciate their accomplishments even as the system we all work in has become more and more difficult to navigate and survive in.

That brings us to the other side - the cons and the bigger picture of the cons. That's something that I wish more teachers were more in tune with and more vocal about.

Yes, teaching can be extremely awarding if you can make it work financially but make no mistake, public education is under attack and not just by republicans. We see daily the news out of Florida but there are more subtle things going on.

I've been calling out the college board for ages - treating districts as cash cows, peddling in valueless high stakes tests and on and on. Too few teachers call them out and take a stand. When they did dirty with the AP African American Studies and Florida there were a few complaints but now we're back to business as usual.

Another big one are charters. Again, I've been stating my opinion for decades but too few take the time to look behind the hype. The blindly accept their published graduation rates and never question simple factual data like how Success Academy boasted a near perfect graduation and college acceptance rate with their first cohort but never mention that they started with nearly 100 students but only graduated 17.

Now, they're not even trying to hide. In NY because our leaders are beholden to the right, charters, most notably the money chains like Success Academy got legislation passed so that the public school system would have to either provide space for charters in their already overcrowded buildings or pay the rent for the charters. Just last week it was announced that Success Academy created a shell entity that purchased properties. You can be sure that those properties will be charging the city exorbitant amounts to pay for their charter schools that while being the darling of people like Mike Bloomberg only graduate 17% of their students.

These and many more big picture issues are changing the landscape of public education and not for the better. Republican states have skipped passed the charter movement and gone straight to vouchers - a way to directly funnel money from the public to the wealthy but blue states are still destroying public education behind a screen.

So that's the good and that's the bad. I'm excited for the new youngsters who want to enter our field but I'm appealing to us elders to take a stand and be more vocal to make sure they have a field to teach in,

Thanks for reading. Hope the first part was inspirational and sorry for the rant but I wish more teachers and more people in general would really take a stand.

Next time back to more direct CS Ed stuff.