At UT, they have a 5 year masters degree education program. The intention is 4 years of undergrad, a semester of grad school (typically done in the summer) of research classes and then a year of student teaching while writing an action research paper. The first semester, you teach half a day and do classes the second half of the day and second semester, you teach all day and present your research.
(And, in my case, plan a wedding. What was I thinking?! Oh yea. He was awesome :))
In the second semester, I was told I would be a traveling teacher with the hearing specialist in a neighboring county. I learned that I would hop in a car every morning with the teacher and we would go around to all of the schools in the county to provide services. I also learned that my teacher had been fighting ovarian cancer for four years. When I met Mickey, we had instant chemistry. She was laid back and jovial and had an awesome sense of sarcasm, which is my love language. We were a perfect match. We provided services to special needs preschools, sweet elementary students, scattered middle schoolers (who would always hide their hearing aides from us), and a few high schoolers who wished we would just go away. While traveling around the county, we discussed our dogs (she had a schnauzer that provided her tons of company during her cancer fight), cooking, family, weddings... No topic was off limits.
In our teaching, we had lots of tough situations. Parents who had divorced over their child's IEP, pregnant teens, parents who didn't bother to show up to their IEP meetings, and, of course, Mickey's cancer.
What I learned is that there are tough things in teaching. Often times, the lesson doesn't work, the students don't cooperate, you're provided no space to work, no materials to work with... But that it's all in perspective because life happens. At the end of your life, is what is going wrong going to matter? (Which, for Mickey, could have been any time) She always chose joy. Always. She had a hysterical story to tell about every situation and I still laugh about many of them today.
When I got my first teaching job, I was assigned a mentor teacher who embodied the same philosophy that Mickey had. It was as if my new mentor teacher had talked to my college mentor about how to teach me to teach. Meg is now one of my best friends in the world and gives so much wisdom to my career, including the advice I always turn to, "No matter what decisions are made by higher ups, I will show up and do my job tomorrow." And we always choose laughter. (Most of which, we find funnier than anyone else does) Incredible mentors.
Mickey and I have been Facebook friends where she and I would interact and relive inside jokes. Her sense of humor always has made me laugh more than most.
Last night, I dreamed that Mickey had moved into our house and told me that she had called hospice. I woke up shaken and grabbed my phone at 4:30 and realized that the last post on her Facebook was in an album called "Mickey's last trip to the beach" and it was posted at the beginning of October and my heart sank. I googled her name and found her obituary and found out that she lost her battle with cancer on November 11.
My heart breaks that the world has lost such an incredible woman. I celebrate for her that she is finally done fighting. From her, I learned so much about life and how to face it. And I consider my life and career so much better off that I had her as my original mentor. I will forever laugh a little when I hear the word "behoove" and will never look at a ShopVac the same.
If you're a teacher, mentor a new one that is starting and teach them the positive and the laughter behind our profession. And teach them that life is never too bad to not laugh along the way.
My life is better off that I was taught that.
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