When offered the prompt this week to write about doors as a metaphor in education, my mind immediately went to the doors I’ve seen on the Camino de Santiago, a thousand-year-old matrix of pilgrimage paths winding through Spain, Portugal, and France.
The doors I’ve encountered on the Camino have a magical quality, and I am often left wondering, “What is on the other side?”
This spring, GCC will graduate its first baccalaureate class of elementary and special education students. I had the honor of teaching their first-semester Educational Psychology course in fall of 2023, and this semester I am teaching the Professional Seminar course as these same students complete their student teaching.
As I think about it, so much of what I do is try to explain to these students what’s on the other side of the “teaching door.” I want to preview for them both the joys and pains that are part of this venerable profession. I want to flag potential pitfalls without scaring my students away. I want to share all the reasons why becoming a teacher was the best decision I ever accidentally fell into.
Very often, my students envision the door to the teaching world lined with roses, perhaps with a set of charming stone steps leading to their entry:
And others have in mind a more slapped-together entrance like the doorframe of this iconic bar on the Camino:
And still others envision a combination of whimsy and reality:
But as much as I want to forecast for them what they might experience in their first years of teaching, they will only really know when they cross the threshold to their own classrooms.
By establishing a teacher preparation pathway, GCC has opened the door for many students who might not have otherwise sought teacher certification. (And what Heather Merrill and her team have done to create this opportunity for students is nothing short of magic!) As a result, we professors now hold the door for our soon-to-be graduates as they take over in the profession where some of us began many years ago.
May what these new teachers find on the other side of the classroom door be nothing less than the stuff of their teaching dreams!
