Floyd Swagerty’s comments on Retirement

Floyd Swagerty’s comments after 34 years in the teaching profession

1979

I feel proud to have been an educator and a part of the teaching profession these past 34 years. We all teach in one way or another and in such activity we find unusual and almost mysterious satisfaction. The mother and father in daily contact with their children are teaching constantly: teaching the baby to walk, teaching the young child to swim, to fish, to read, to sing; teaching habits of living and thinking, sometimes by precept and sometimes by example.

Children teach each one another at their play, colleagues in business teach each one another in their professional associations, physicians try whenever possible to devote a portion of of their time to teaching medical students, concert artists are drawn to young people with talent, ministers are engaged in one of the noblest forms of teaching, and so we might go one and on.

Why does this happen? Because we all sense, directly or indirectly consciously or unconsciously, that to leave a vestige of oneself in the development of another is a touch of immortality. Through this we live far beyond our span of mortal years. Through this we find new and more impelling reasons for being, we find inner satisfaction and a feeling a worth.

If you have ever seen the light of understanding shine in another’s eyes where no light shone before, if you have ever guided the unsteady and unpracticed hand and watched it suddenly grow firm and purposely, if you have ever watched a young mind begin to soar to new heights and have sensed that you are participating in this unfolding of the intellect, then you have felt within you the sense of being a humble instrument  in the furthermore of mankind. These rewarding experiences counter balances all the drudgery, the heartaches and the sacrifices which are a part of every worthwhile profession.

Listen to the words of K. Gibran in his book “The Prophet”:

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love,

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,

And to one another, and to God.

Yes, I have loved all 34 years in the teaching profession.

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