A Teacher Dies Yet Lives On in New Paltz

I turned 55 two weeks ago today. Along with the receding hairline comes a lot of thinking.
Thinking of one's mortality, where one has been and where one is going. Trying to eliminate the phrase "should have," and thinking of all the people that have come and gone from our lives.

Too often I want to re-connect with people who for lack of a better phrase have made up the story of my life. One regret I have always had came right came in late 1982. I was 18 and I reached out to the speech therapist I had seen from the age of four until I was in 3rd grade. I had wanted to show him the fruits of his hard work and that except for the slight lisp (the braces were what really curtailed it) that I talked fine.

Sadly, my mother died about a week before I was supposed to see him and I never even to notify him that I wasn't coming. I never called back. Never changed the date. He died in 2001.

About a month ago I found out that my 1st grade girlfriend had passed away. She was my age. Heart attack. We were friends on Facebook; we communicated, but she wasn't at any of the last two reunions nor did we see nor speak on the phone or whatever. The last time I saw her was over 30 years ago at the Fountain Diner in Hartsdale, NY.

Having said all this, I was saddened to hear about another long lost friend who died last week at the age of 53. Trish Rukeyser Lewis I knew as a camper and a counselor at Camp Sloane in Lakeville, CT, between 1977 and 1984. I was closer to her sister Jill (who was only there as a camper), and in fact Jill and I stayed in touch. Maybe until the mid 80's thereabouts.

I had heard that Trish was a teacher over the years from mutual friends and even recall hearing that she was battling cancer in the 90's. But I did not know the extent of the type of teacher she was. And you know what? I wasn't surprised.

This is from the New Paltz NY school district webpage (click to enlarge)...

One word. Wow! Second word. Amazing!

Talk about leaving a legacy behind. Talk about touching so many lives in which Trish will continue to live on in for decades to come. Is this, not what we want from our educators?

I want to do my best to avoid sounding cynical, but how the heck does one measure of put an algorithm on the type of teacher Trish was? Can an APPR do Trish or any teacher like her justice? There is no data, no professional development, no nothing that can measure her. This is what has happened to education in the last 15 years. We have all become a bunch of data collectors and have had all of our instincts surgical removed so we have become inane data driven drones regurgitating the latest soon to fail fad. The New Paltz community was blessed to have Trish and guess what? I bet her principal was blessed to have her as well.

Meanwhile, in NYC a teacher that questions why a student is in the wrong setting all of the sudden is facing termination. That it for the snark.

One more thing. Don't put off what can be done now. People die. Get to those people you have lost touch with or whatever before either of you die. Or do something that you been meaning to do now. Don't spend the rest of your years saying, "I should have."