I apologize for starting 2 threads in 1 week, y'all, I generally wait my turn.  However, this week I'm retiring from 40 years of teaching Spanish and Death & Dying psych classes to nursing students.  It's a big transition, and to afford retiring alone as a bachelor I'll be moving to the cheaper cost of living of Mexico in a few weeks.

The pandemic made it a tough year to end a career.  In my Spanish classes I had always modeled how growing up in Mexico as a missionary kid reduced my fear of foreigners and could reduce theirs, too.  In my nursing classes about terminal patient care, I had always modeled how getting past fear of one's own death could reward you with connecting with dying patients who were the funniest and most honest because at the end they had nothing left to lose and could just be real.  This pertains to my PTSD recovery because as a war child missionary kid who was nearly killed twice in our mission field's civil war zone, coming to terms with trauma and mortality led me to grad school to train as a hospital ER chaplain dealing with trauma at the hospital door for 10 years in Chicago.

In both cases I always used my own PTSD recovery, whether teaching Spanish or terminal care, to point out how empathy was central, just the way it is among us here in our support group at DS PTSD.  That was hard to do under normal teaching circumstances because I had 2 supervisors who openly operated with a stigma toward PTSD. When I went up for tenure in 2016 I had to show community service from my volunteering here at DS PTSD as a Community Leader.  But their response to the nice letter from DS recommending me was turned against me by those 2 administrators and I was put through an extra tenure committee just to question my PTSD recovery and its place in my psychology courses' classroom.  It worried me enough to consult a lawyer a couple of times as to my rights, but in the end I did get tenure without a lawsuit or threatening one.

So teaching about opening your heart in empathy was so important to how I thought I should teach that I went through being open about my PTSD to model a psychological approach with less stigma.  Everything became hard to model this year, though, when our campus was closed due to COVID-19 and classes were no longer face to face but via live streaming.  To start with, my poor college's live streaming software turned out to be glitchy at first.  For half of this semester my lectures were interrupted in every class by frozen screens or crashing 6 times per class.  I got my college to buy Zoom software for me and things got better.  Still, classes had been so bad technologically that I responded by being lenient with students struggling to learn patient empathy from me without ever meeting me face to face through crashing computer software.  It was a shame here at the end of a mostly good career, but I figured we were all doing the best we could and it was just the way things were this last year of my teaching career.  I just wouldn't go out teaching my best and I had to accept it.

Tomorrow is the last day of classes forever for me, and today my students turned in their final term papers for me to grade.  Oh, my God, I was surprised and amazed at how much they learned in spite of all of the pandemic limitations on our class.  I removed the students' names for anonymity to I could share.  Here are just 3 students' comments that came attached to some of the term papers they turned in.  Their comments touched me deeply because I didn't think I'd gotten to do a very good job as a teacher via Zoom this semester, but they learned patient empathy anyway in spite of all.

Student comment #1:  "I am blessed to have been a part of your last class before retirement.  I know your teachings will help me in my future as a nurse.  

Best wishes to you!  Enjoy Retirement, you have certainly earned it!

Sincerely,

S."

Student comment #2:  "As a side note, Congratulations on retirement from teaching! It was an honor to be a part of one of your last classes. I couldn't have asked for a better instructor for this course. Have fun in Mexico Professor!

L."

Student comment #3:  "Thank you for teaching this class so awesome this semester. It has helped me a lot, and I’m sure it will continue to help me throughout my nursing career. Best prayers and wishes to you and the rest of your life! Thank you so much again! Safe travels!

E."

Holy cow, y'all, dunno what class they were in because I was so frustrated teaching via live streaming on a computer that I would never have guessed it was mine!  But I'm mighty grateful that the heart of our classes somehow got transmitted through those computer screens anyway!  It's a miracle, and a mighty nice one to have on the last day before retiring after 40 years of teaching.  I celebrated with a slice of cherry pie and a margarita after work today.  Living alone as I do, I didn't have anybody to share the good news with at home after work, so I'm glad you're here so I could share it with you!  :-)