On teaching: let me count the ways | #sol21 Day 8

Caveat: I often feel like an imposter in this mostly K-12 reading and writing focused teaching community. Now a retired educator, not a retired K-12 teacher, am I still or even a teacher at all? 

Retired but digitally active and engaged with learning and teaching, what am I?  Retiring does not stop the itch to teach, but what should I call myself? Lifelong learner and free range teacher, stealth educator, guerilla educationist

How have I been a teacher? Let me count the ways. 

I started teaching around 1959, still in high school, helping the high school English teacher mark papers and, outside school, teaching a Girl Scout patrol riding and horse care basics for their horsemanship badges at the behest of a friend's younger sister. A few years later, I certified as a Red Cross WSI (Water Safety Instructor) and taught swimming. My senior reasearch paper (career focus foisted on us) was on college teaching as a career. 

Fast forward past starting college, crossing the pond, overseas higher ed and other experiences, languages learned, interruptions, back to college briefly but out again working at different jobs, eventually teaching riding.

Finally I get back to college and onto to graduate school, MA and being an English TA aka future composition adjunct in training. My next stop was UC Davis Comparative Literature program, this time as a TA in Comparative Literarure and Spanish. Late 90s, I volunteered to teach ESL online to learn how to teach on line. I helped grad student colleagues with email and other computer basics and taught riding again at the university barn.

Post Davis, I taught as a community college adjunct, taught GED, continued with volunteer ESL, taught college composition and literature online, directed local family literacy program and taught in the after school program.

Wherever I have been over the years, I always gravitate back to teaching. About teaching: you're always learning...more about teaching, more to teach, from students and about yourself.

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The annual March Slice of Life Challenge (SOLSC) is hosted by Two Writing Teachers to encourage teachers-as-writers. Registration for this years challenge is closed, but you can still follow, even post, comment and share. Then join next year if you want to. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too