Celebrating Teachers and What They Do, Everyday, But Especially Today. Congratulations, Dr. Wendy Kohli.

Dr. Wendy Kohli, Professor

Last night, I hosted Fairfield University's Celebration of Teaching for student teachers, cooperating teachers, and supervisors. Recognizing a career in education as a profession, events like ours are extremely important. Too often teachers are blamed, shunned, and misrepresented in the public vernacular in totally incorrect ways. Teachers are knowledgeable, they are hard working, they labor intensely, and they are rarely applauded.

Dr. Wendy Kohli, a well-published philosopher of education and colleague in Educational Studies and Teacher Preparation at Fairfield University, was invited to welcome guests at our event and to share wisdom from 30 years of working with K-12 education and higher education. This spring, she will also be retiring, so the words she shared with our audience were extremely welcome and needed.

Without a doubt, she was the sage given the stage to provide insight and inspiration for the soon-to-be-graduates of our program. In 1956, Maxine Greene, Dr. Kohli's mentor, friend, and collaborator, penned,

We also have our social imagination: the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, on our schools. As I write of social imagination, I am reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “it is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and our suffering and that we decide that these are unbearable” (1956, pp. 434-435) (p. 5).

The social imagination is what Dr. Wendy Kohli has provided her students for three decades and what she has instilled in me over the last four years. Dr. Kohli is a visionary, an activist with the intent to address the social ills of a 'deficient society,' and a dreamer. It has been a pleasure to dream with her at Fairfield.

I cannot think of a better person than Dr. Wendy Kohli to bring insight to educators at this time in educational history. In my remarks, I discussed the importance for professionals to stand their ground, to take action, and to talk back to the mythology being created for them by the media, policy makers, and so-called reformers. Teachers are truly amazing and on this day, The National Day for Celebrating Teachers, we need to remind ourselves of the incredible work we do. Hearing Dr. Kohli's remarks, however, I feel it is important to applaud all she has given to our campus and the field of educational research.

The 2014-2015 Hamden Teacher of the Year, Mary Nelson, articulated it, as well - the impact teachers make in the lives of students sometimes get unnoticed, but the students in our classroom are paying attention. Building relationships with them: through hard work, creativity, modeling, and encouragement, is the most important labor we do.