Legacy in Education

“Legacy. What is a legacy?
It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”
Hamilton the Musical

I continue to reflect a great deal after the AAPT winter meeting this year. This year we are celebrating 40 years of the Physics Teaching Resource Agents and Karen Jo Matsler gave one of the plenaries. During her talk I couldn’t help be realize the legacy that I’m connected to as a physics teacher.

One of the most bittersweet encounters is that with a well-loved teacher who is retiring. Over the course of a 35 year career that teacher has potentially impacted as many as 5000 of their own students, and that excludes the many more they may have impacted through extra curriculars. The best teachers become legends in their communities, and as those students grow into adults they continue to share the stories about how their teacher made a difference. I know I continue to do the same to this day.

But when a teacher retires from a school, their legacy is rarely left in the building longer than a year. A new teacher fills their place and within a single year the program either shifts into a new entity, or, in some cases, is completely decimated.

The very real truth about teaching is that although teachers leave an impact that lasts forever on their students, there is no legacy left in the very place where they poured all of that work and love.

However, that does not mean that there is no place for teachers to leave a legacy.

It is in the professional societies that legacy lives on.

I saw this while listening to Karen Jo’s plenary. Slides filled with photos of activities, demos and labs that I grew up believing were specific to the teachers in my area. No, it wasn’t that. Many of those teachers were also involved with PTRA. They brought their learning back and forth from PTRA, AAPT and their local communities.

I saw this in an interactive session I attended. At the end of the presentation I was in the back with two college faculty and one shared that she loved seeing this presentation, shared as the teacher’s own, which originated from the work of Alan Van Heuvlan. We proceeded to talk about how Alan was her adviser.

I saw this when Duane Merrill offered a presentation about creating community around “Phood, Physics and Phun”, which is also the tagline for Chicago Physics Northwest meetings.

I encounter this with nearly every conversation at AAPT, especially those who are near retirement. Each of us was inspired by someone who came before us, someone who brought us in, pushed us forward, encouraged us to grow and learn and lead.

And the memory of these educators lives on. It lives through the stories that go along with the demonstrations and the activities. It lives through the work that continues to excite and engage others in teaching. Professional societies are not only the spaces that allow current educators to network, connect, receive support and grow. They are the spaces that house the professional legacies of educators, not just as inspirational teachers, but as exemplary professionals in their craft.