On June 14th of 2010, I officially retired from the teaching profession. At that point, I didn’t really have any concrete ideas on what retirement would hold. I contemplated several different avenues, even including the possibility of working at a funeral home. (I’d totally forgotten about that one.) But the path of the past eight years has seen me return to the classroom in several different capacities, in fact, to the point I’ve just completed renewing my teaching certificate for another five years.
For the majority of the eight years of retirement, I’ve substituted from day-to-day for teachers who were sick or out for some other reason. But I’ve also done more than a dozen interim positions for teachers out on maternity leave, surgeries, and the like. These include working three-fourths of a year at one middle school when a replacement for a retiring teaching couldn’t be found and half a year at another middle school where a teacher had resigned. Most recently, I was given the opportunity to teach fifth-grade science every day for half a day for the entire school year.
It was because of my increased desire to continue teaching that I’ve recently renewed my teaching certificate. This will allow me to work more of the long-term positions and hopefully return to the fifth-grade position during the next school year. It required quite a bit of work over a relatively short period to earn the credits needed to renew, but I had no doubt in my mind it was the direction I should be taking at this point.
I have learned that you never really know what the future holds. You can have and make all the plans that you want, but there is an ultimate plan, a Divine plan, being worked on each and every day of our lives. I put my hope and trust in God, turning my will and my life over to His care and trusting Him with the outcomes. I wouldn’t change anything about my eight years of retirement and can only imagine what the next eight years might hold.
To Everything There is a Season
1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
David Lee 