Now that I am of that age where retirement is closer than the climbing years, I often think about this idea of legacy. Like Ozymandias, does my ego get left behind like a plaque outside of a teacher's room "This room belonged to Ms. Beth Powers who taught at Kamehameha for 50 years." The plaque does not talk about her disdain for us brownies, or the way her red pen slashed through our essays like a knife carving out vitriol with each stroke. It does not talk about her blatant racism towards us dumb Hawaiians or the colonizing arrogance that she, not even an English major, was the best choice to enlighten the illiterates for 50 years. If the generational trauma she left behind for 50 years is what a legacy is about, let me walk quietly through the exit doors, silent as the mist, anonymous as a shadow let me be a wondering by random strangers long after I am gone.
Connecting Random Readings to the Courses I Teach