Being with Tim and Barbara Haag in Bethany Connecticut and still awakening at 5 am allows me time to write my journals and to go onto Face Book and catch up on family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and people and things of interest every day. It gives me time for reflection and time to look at TedTalks and Youtube and learn anew.
I am still in awe at what I was able to do so far in my teaching career. I know how tough it was for me when I started out at RBHS and struggled to find that way of teaching that was somewhere in my make-up, but of which I was not sure or how to present. I was always a compassionate person, but being a rookie, I had no clue how to put it into action. So I bumped my head continuously, but remained committed to something that I knew was there.
When I got back to teaching at SACS, a few glimpses of what I was trying to do and the realization of that slowly but surely emerged, but still with many bumps and bruises.
In 1981 I finally fulfilled a childhood dream of visiting the USA, a dream that was fostered when I met my great uncle Waldo Gillies in 1954. I was intrigued by this silver-haired and regal giant at a family reunion. He was married to one of my grandma's 12 siblings, aunt Freda. I first went down to Miami and Orlando to Disney World and then embarked on a marathon bus trip via New Orleans to Magnolia Mississippi where my uncle Bill Gillies, one of Waldo and Freda's sons, practiced in a medical facility. That was the start of another quest, to work in a Summer Camp in the USA and here I found more of what I was seeking.
As Field Sports Director of Camp Waubeeka in the Curtis S. Read Scout Reservation of the Westchester Putnam Council, I ran the Shooting Ranges and taught the Americans to play cricket and rugby and things like skeet shooting, .22 rifle and Muscat rifle and shotgun/skeet shooting. Here I was given responsibility for not only my area, but also as the number two at camp under Terry Bennett. Here too I met Tim Haag.
These two friends and Bob Towne, Reservation Director, saw in me elements of leadership that had not been seen at SACS as well as recognizing and speaking of how compassionate I was and I saw how the boys reacted to how I spoke, coached and supported them. Now I was realizing my own ability to teach, not just in the classroom,but out there in the sports arena and just hanging about and even in the classroom, my ability to be confident to teach life lessons as I too became wiser.
The following two years, 1987 and 1988 I was appointed Camp Director of the main Scouting Camp, Camp Buckskin with over 20 staff and 1400 boys and their adult Scouting leaders. And I did a good job. I became confident in what I could do and say. many years later in 2010, a Scout Master, who was a dad and Troop leader in 1988 as well as a Fireman in Westchester, said to me at an Alumni Dinner in New York, sat down beside me and said; "I recall every word you said in your closing speech at the end of that Summer of 1988 and it has stayed with me and I have used it". I realized then that I had lessons to teach and things to tell and that I had actually been doing it for so long. I also realized that for the past more than a decade I have been loving my teaching so much and that all the bumps and bruises, the struggles and put-downs were actually overshadowed by the fact that what I was doing was right. I was teaching how I tried in 1976.
And now that I really have time to reflect and to read and hear the views of my boys through these many years, I know I did a good job. I know I did good.
The trick now will be, to where now? This trip, this journey, this adventure will point me where next and I will have the confidence to go wherever fate will lead me with humility, but with the confidence of knowing that I can do it.
So here I am doing something I dreamed of with amazing and magnificent friends and family here in the USA and around the world and I can do it easily, but knowing that the long journey from 1976 has been an accumulation of wisdom and skills and knowledge that I can pass on and also add to.
I love you all and I am so happy and blessed to be seeing so many of you that I taught, tutored, coached and mentored on this trip around the world.
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