When it's time to hang it up

This is an image is didactic.  It is taken from Muhammad Ali's last fight.  He was lured into a return to the ring to fight Larry Holmes, a former sparring partner, and regain his heavyweight championship for a record fourth time. Ali was beaten to a mumble.

In the past month I have been asked many times "are you sure you want to retire, you're so young?"  This has come from my parents, my siblings, my friends, my colleagues, some of whom I taught, but one group of people has never asked me that question-my students.

I'm no Muhammad Ali; I'm no champ.  Ali wanted to stay for a legacy.  The very nature of schools and their ability to renew themselves, offers no such promise.  Holmes, while pummeling his former mentor, begged him to quit.  This is something we should all try to avoid.

The simple truth is that there are reasons that both pull me into retirement and push me out of teaching.

I am being pulled by a cohort of teachers I grew up with in the profession, who are all now happily retired. These are people I worked with for almost three decades, we shared marriages, divorces, births and deaths.  Many of them were my mentors and role models.  I want to join them.

I am  pushed by another cohort of teachers.  Whether teachers at retirement age or beyond know it or not, young teachers are watching us.  A young person in teaching has done as many as seven years in temporary work. I've written about this before here.  Teachers at retirement age or beyond have many reasons to stay.  Lost marriages, dependent children, late starts in careers and financial difficulties in complicated lives compel people to stay and they should stay if they wish.  But be under no delusions, your younger colleagues want your position and the reality is, your effectiveness in the classroom will  fade. It's time to hand my job to a younger person.  I'd rather have someone ask me to stay than quietly imply I should leave.

I am pulled by a larger life.  There's some travelling to do, some more writing, maybe some painting.  There's some hikes and there's a fitness regime ahead that I hope I can stick to.  There's some canoe trips and some reading and there's some road trips with Christine and the dog(s).

I am pushed by age.  This is an uncomfortable thing for people in education to face and many disagree with me but teachers have a shelf life.  Your students first see you as a friend.  They then see you as an older sibling.  Then you are a parent.  When they see you as a grandparent, it's time. To a fourteen year old, anything over fifty is ancient.

Finally, I am pulled by a pension.  Teachers, because of careful planning and by choosing to defer some benefits, have developed a pension plan that is the envy of most people.  It is a good plan, not a gold plated one, but a good one.  I've contributed  8-12% of my income from each and every cheque  since I was 24.   My employer has contributed.  My representatives have hired professional managers who are paid in salary not in fees.  Those managers have invested money so we have surpluses and my representatives have shaped benefits so that the plan can be sustained.  It is a model that should be adopted by our government for everyone.  I'm going to retire because I can.

So this week, papers will be filed,  a resignation letter will be penned and hopefully on June 30th I will walk out of the school like this: