I wish to dedicate this practical guide for retiring and current retired teachers to my parents Lewis L. Sonntag and Natalie R. Sonntag, to the rest of my relatives, and especially to my maternal grandmother Rebecca Yaspan who literally saved my life, gave me personal attention and love, and really was my mentor who originally inspired me to teach.

Over the years of being a teacher, you become an academic artist, if you will, of your students who can ultimately become your masterpieces. They can learn to be bright and use their intelligence, and they can become their own masterpieces by learning and applying the information that you share with them. It is also ideal to encourage them when needed and to praise them when warranted, so that...

The title of this chapter is a fair question to ask yourself, especially when you have devoted a lot of time and a lot of work to the teaching profession. You have been a guide for all kinds of students, maybe even their parents or their guardians, and maybe the rest of the educational community throughout the years, with hopefully many more successes than setbacks. Your successes have been...

When you have decided to retire after having considered the variables discussed in the previous chapter, you may wish to declare your intentions to your friends and to your colleagues. You may wish to inform your students, although it is best ideally not to share this information with them until all of your grades are posted, because their focus needs to be the education you are sharing with them....

The last month of school for any teacher can be quite hectic, even when you are accustomed to the work after so many years of teaching. You may have reports for individual students to complete. You will have meetings to attend. You will need to complete your units of your books, preparing your students for their final exams if given at your school, and determining the grades of students who will...

When you have devoted so many years to teaching with all of your good and not so good experiences, you may begin to mull over the possibilities of wanting to let go of what you have been doing, at least for now. Even the challenging people and the challenging times, as irritating as they can be, you may actually like them, because “it is never a dull moment.”

Once you have completely decided to retire, you may wish to consider what a flight attendant says before a jet departs. He or she gives instructions on how to buckle the seat belt, where the exits are in case of an emergency, as well as about the oxygen masks. What is interesting about the oxygen masks in these suggestions is that the passengers need to wear them first, before putting them on...

If your focus has always been on your professional life and you haven’t devoted much time and much thought to your personal life, it can be a more challenging transition to retirement, because you may not know exactly what you want to do.

Doing all of the personal activities during retirement is one of the prime benefits of not having to fulfill professional obligations. It is indeed truly understandable, if you prefer to rid yourself of anything related to the educational community. This could be due to either having experienced negative or positive situations throughout your teaching years. You may feel that the negative...

You might be wondering how you could possibly teach without teaching. The fact of the matter is it can be done and is being done, above and beyond any form of formal teaching and tutoring. You can share your ideas with potential teachers or student-teachers by conducting workshops. So, if you wish to do this, here are some possibilities for your consideration.

You probably experienced the accreditation process numerous times while you were teaching. You could have felt that there were plenty of other things that could have been done for the sake of the students instead of all of the meetings and all of the paperwork involved with accreditation.

You devoted much time and much energy to not only learning the information that you have taught, but you also have devoted much time and much energy to sharing the same information in a multitude of ways with your students. Now that you have finished with your teaching career, this can be a great opportunity for you to collaborate with others who have the same expertise as you, without having to...

Mentoring in your community, whether it local or global in nature, truly can be inspiring for all concerned.

After devoting so much time to teaching and any number of activities after retiring like what has been described in the previous chapters or whatever else you have been doing, you may just wish to take classes for yourself for the sake of being that much more informed about the world around you. You just may wish to learn about something else related to your subject matter, or you may wish to...

 

~Steve Sonntag has been a mentor teacher, his district’s high school teacher of the year, department chairperson, tutor, charter school and university teacher, family and teacher workshop presenter, Phi Delta Kappa officer, and author during his more than forty years in education. His...