Diamonds, Runways & Classrooms: An Edu-Bio

 I was raised in a one-square mile town surrounded by orange groves, cattle and humidity.  I lived for diamonds and outfields, baseball was on my mind as well as inside a glove under my mattress, slowly bending toward perfection. But before baseball, there was school, until about three in the afternoon. Truthfully, I loved school too. I loved friends, sports, reading, my teachers & Monday morning laughter about that new, really late television show called Saturday Night Live. 

       I recall a weekend project at a classmate’s house. I do not know why we were putting together some type of structure with pennies and popsicle sticks. I do recall that Bobby did most of the work. What I learned from that project was how other families function. I remember overhearing a discussion about finances. I remember his mom bringing us a sandwich in a bag, even though we were just out the back door.  I guess I can mark that learning opportunity as another insight into how Southern, white, protestant, middle-class, small town families operated...but I needed less Mayo and more Magellan.

         

My parents made the idea of continuing my formal education a given, even though it was not an automatic, expected, or even highly suggested track from the signals I was picking up from the one mile north and south & one mile east and west town in the dead center of Florida.  I left for a college town that was just over twice the size of my hometown of 5,000 and in the insular state of Alabama. Even so, the progressive, global “we are all in this together” point of view my parents cultivated in me was expanded even more in Troy.  

         I again enjoyed school. I loved debating, learning and discovering how much there is to discover. Leaving Troy for a two-decade trip around the world in the US Air Force gave me many more opportunities to learn and teach.  A “desk job” assignment as a classroom instructor, showed me the joy of being on the teacher’s side of a classroom. 

       

 I left flying for the high school classroom and the creativity and challenge are as fresh to me now as my first day 12 years ago. Now I find myself preparing for a future chance to become a leader that supports an entire school of teachers. I feel as excited and slightly overwhelmed as my 22-year old self driving from Alabama to Arizona and the great unknown of Undergraduate Pilot Training. The words of focus from landing instruction apply still, “aimpoint, airspeed…aimpoint, airspeed.”