ENCORE CAREER - TEACHING
Teaching appears to be the encore career of choice, judging from the boom in articles and studies about people taking up the challenge of public school classrooms.
“Clearly it’s not for the money,” writes Meg McConahey in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “For many, it is a calling that went unheeded early in life in favor of a more lucrative career. For others, it is a chance to reconnect with a subject they once fell in love with, whether it be art, literature or history.”
The story highlights Dave Donnelly, who co-founded a successful biotech company, sold it to a Japanese corporation, and returned to his first love — teaching.
“Students are amazing. They’re funny. They have incredible insight. I write down pages of things I’ve learned from students,” the economics teacher at Sonoma Valley High School told McConahey.
Education, and teaching in particular, topped the list of desired encore careers in the MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Encore Career Survey of 44-70 year olds, released earlier this year.
That finding was confirmed by a survey for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J., which found that 42 percent of college-educated adults ages 24 to 60 would consider teaching as a career.
“There are many people of this generation who are extremely idealistic and who came out of the spirit of all that was going on when they were growing up and had a great desire to make a difference in many different ways,” said John Gomperts, president of Civic Ventures, which publishes Encore.org.
“But a lot of people get diverted, and life intervenes and you end up being something you never thought you were going to be. And yet for some, there is a little flame that still burns with idealism and their dreams deferred.” Labels: baby boomers, Bernard Kelly, dignified retirement, good health, leisure, retirement, volunteer, well being |
