FUTURE AS A LEARNER ESSAY.
This essay parallels my own childhood experiences with my philosophy on education,
and together how the two help inspire my professional goals.
"GO FOR A WALK"
Jake Manning
Spring 2015
“The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.”
-Tony Kushner
Consider a boy. This boy grew up in a small town with humble surroundings and limited advantages except for perhaps the most important one – others. This boy had a family that loved him. This boy made friends with a few other boys in the neighborhood. Like a river forging its way from source to mouth, shaped and guided by its surroundings, this boy brushed shoulders with his family, friends, and community. This boy grew up. We all grew up.
My professional goals cannot be mentioned without recognizing the source of my inspiration - the source of the river. My goals in education are not my own. They are the inspiration of a group of boys who were invited to learn, ask questions, and to do life alongside mentors. They were taken for a walk.
1. Magic Is Real: A Community
Education can take place in countless settings. Ranging from one-on-one apprenticeships in rural northern Michigan to the 5,200 acre, multi-million dollar campus of Michigan State University. Wherever education takes place, it both builds and needs community. The learner needs a teacher. The teacher needs a learner. Even a child reading a book alone in a closet is surely not learning from herself, rather, from a teacher who chose the medium of paper and ink.
One of my goals within education is to serve a community – a group of students, families, and colleagues. Make no mistake, I did not choose the profession of education out of a deep love for algebra or grammar or any specific discipline. I chose education because of the incredible, borderline magical effect a school can have on its surrounding town, campus, region, and culture.
I am certainly a product of this communal magic. Growing up, my father served as a teacher, coach, and administrator in my small southwestern Michigan town. Through this front row seat (and occasional back-stage pass) I became ever aware of the role a school or college has within its community. The school is the center of the town. My first goal is to serve faithfully in whatever community I am a part, and this necessitates I continue to make strides in my own professional and personal development as an educational and communal leader.
2. Teaching And Leading: Go For A Walk
I have been fortunate to teach and lead in a variety of settings and roles in my young career. Teaching “troubled teens” in a wilderness therapy program in the Uinta Mountains of Utah, or guiding prospective students and families through the college admissions process at a selective liberal arts institution, to currently leading and serving on a variety of committees and projects at a developing urban public school, I have desired for a range of distinctive experiences in education to help balance and diversify myself professionally and personally. Through these experiences I have realized my goal is not reliant on a position or rank.
My professional goal is simple. I want to go for a walk. I want to teach and be taught by the students, colleagues, and community members around me.
These experiences and roles have afforded me the perspective that no matter what role I find myself, I will only be outwardly effective and inwardly rewarded if I seize every opportunity to go for a walk. Teaching, in my experience, is just that. Is there a better way to learn – or to teach – than to simply do life alongside others? Whether I stay in administration or find myself back in a classroom or lecture hall, my goal remains focused on teaching each lesson, mentoring each student on this walk we all share.
3. Coaching: A Matchless Platform
One such way – and in my experiences the most unique and dynamic way – I have been able to both teach and learn has been through the living and breathing platform of coaching. Not everyone participates in athletics, and that is what most associate when they hear or read the word coach, but when you think of the imperative individuals who taught you how to handle success with humility, or to channel the agony of failure into something constructive, it may or may not have taken place on a football field or a basketball court.
For me there were no more impactful teachers in my life than that of my coaches. These people certainly seized every opportunity to take me for a walk, and along the way taught me way more than strategy or X’s and O’s. In my experience, there is no taller mountain in each of our own communities to daily connect the reality of citizenship and character to the classroom than that of coaching. Similar to my professional goal, I may remain coaching college football, but whatever level I coach, my goal remains the same: seize the unique teaching and coaching opportunities we find along our walks.
Connecting All Three: The Walk We Share
This final goal serves as a connection for the first three. Serving a local community through education is a crucial role within our society. Teaching, leading, and coaching are worthwhile goals. However, to chase these great pursuits with no connection to the bigger picture only limits the potential impact of each pursuit individually. How foolish would it be to win the blue ribbon at the county fair for the best avocados, the best onions, and the best lemons but never even considered trying your hand at guacamole?
My ultimate goal is to serve a community faithfully, to teach, to coach, and to mentor young people for the amazing compounding effect a life spent on these pursuits can have on both the local and greater community. I will attest to it. And I must thank a few honorable, selfless, and zealous people who first served me in this way – who first served us in this way.
Mike is now a dentist. Erik is an electrician. Tony works in IT. Others are in business, finance, or health care. I am in education. But that’s not the point. The point is, we are just a few normal boys who were fortunate enough to have a small community who chose to teach us, coach us, and encourage us – a community who took us for a walk.