“Perhaps some detours
aren’t detours at all.
Perhaps they are
actually the path.”
Katherine Wolf

When I walked out of my sixth period class at St. Lawrence Academy in Santa Clara on the last day of school in 2015, I thought it would be my last day in the classroom as a teacher. Little did I know that four years later, I would find myself back in the classroom as a long-term substitute at St. Victor School in San José for another two years. When I left St. Victor School in June 2021, again I believed that it would be the last time I stood in front of a classroom full of students. Wrong again.

On Thursday afternoon, I had the absolute pleasure of spending a 50-minute class period with two sections of 11th grade students at St. Augustine’s College in Nassau, Bahamas. The students had questions about how SAC was different in 1975 from what they are experiencing there today. We talked a little about finding one’s purpose in life. I explained to the students that when things get tough in life, it’s helpful to remember that the word “crisis” in the Chinese language requires two characters. Together they mean “crisis” as we understand it. However, the two characters, when separated, each have their own individual meaning, too. Not surprisingly, one means “danger.” The other, however, means “opportunity.”

I shared with the students that we are challenged to look for the good in any situation. I also reminded them that, as people of faith, we can look for God in any situation.

Several of the students had specific questions they wanted me to answer on a variety of topics. Before I knew it, the class period was over. The students were energetic, polite, and incredibly hospitable to this old member of the SAC faculty. I’ll never know, but there is a very good chance that some of the students in that classroom were the grandchildren of students I taught in 1975.

How ironic that what I now believe will be my last day teaching a classroom full of students will be at the same school where my teaching career began 48 years earlier.