Question: I am a retired teacher and I was thinking my
husband and I would like to memorialize our lives as educators. What do you suggest?
Answer: I’m a retired educator too, so we have something in common.
Congratulations on your career, and thank you for your many years of service to the field
of education.
When I think of educators, I think of the classic symbols of our profession, whether
accurate or not: apples (especially for kindergarten through the twelfth grade); a school
bus; cap and gown; an owl; chalk and chalkboard (I taught long before PowerPoint became
fashionable); pencil and paper; and, perhaps all else, a text book.
Microsoft’s clip art shows classroom settings, an instructor at the chalk board,
instructors using a pointer, the owl with a pointer, the owl with and without a graduation
cap, the nice teacher and the mean teacher, and a variety of caricatures of educators.
There are discipline specific pictures, and still more caricatures. If you taught golf,
then there are pictures with golf as the subject of the class, et cetera.
For administrators, we have an entirely broader selection of symbols, but in deference to
administrators, I’ll stop with what we have. (Smile)
Now, we can build anything you like, including beautiful granite, marble, or bronze
apples. Or we can etch any of these emblems of remembrance on a beautiful granite memorial
for you. One that I like, and confess I considered for myself as part of my process of
designing my own memorial, is a free standing book on a base. I love this idea.
For those folks who are members of the clergy, we can design a beautiful monument shaped
as a Bible. With vertical monuments, there is a significant amount of room on the back
that is available for telling the life story, or “living legacy” SM as we say in
our company, using carving, etching, or bronze. Or perhaps you would like to include some
of the educator’s maxims, such as “Adapt the difficulty of your lessons to the
capacity of your scholars.”
You worked hard for your credentials, and you gave a lot to the community; give a little
to yourself by building a memorial that is truly unique and an heirloom for your family
and future generations.
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For suggestions and ideas, or to tell me I am right or wrong, please let me hear from you.
I enjoy receiving email from my readers.
Question: I am a retired teacher and I was thinking my
husband and I would like to memorialize our lives as educators. What do you suggest?