SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett
The academic year at Seward County Community College is out of the gate and going fast already. After a week of faculty and staff training and a week of student orientation, our campus is full of energy and people. It can be a little overwhelming.
I remember that feeling from the first time I walked into a classroom situation not as a student but as a teacher. Actually, I had arrived at the elementary school in urban Denver, Colo., to work as a teaching assistant for the final semester in my teaching degree. When I arrived, the school principal took me into the office with shocking news: the main teacher had resigned. I was now in charge of more than 30 students.
Did I mention, this was a kindergarten class?
Panic does not even begin to describe how I felt. After that first chaotic day (which I don’t really remember because it was all about survival), I called my mother. She was a teacher and school administrator. She had warned me not to get into education if I wanted to earn money. But I admired my mom and her work, and it seemed like a good plan to go ahead and complete a teacher credential while I was in college.
I was hoping for sympathy as I told her, “I’m not sure I can do this, maybe I don’t really need to be a teacher.”
Her reply: Stop being a crybaby and get serious about the job you signed up for.
So I did. Like that first day, much of the year Mr. Bennett was a kindergarten teacher is a blur in my mind. It was a low-income school with 95 percent of the students on the free lunch plan. The school resources were limited. I was an inexperienced classroom instructor. They were kindergarten students … did I mention that?
What I do remember is those children themselves. My students faced challenges every day that I had not encountered in my own life. But they were kids like any other kids, and they wanted to learn and explore the world and make connections.
That year changed me just as much as I hope it changed them, some of who are still in contact with me today.
Every year when we welcome students to campus, I’m reminded of my first year in the field of education. I think about how impossible it seemed that I could meet the challenge, and how may mom fully expected me to do so. I also think about how she was right.
That’s the mindset I hope we at SCCC impart to all our instructors, and our students. Whether we come from a background where everyday necessities were nothing to worry about, or a place where abundance was just something you saw on television, we are all here together, trying to do something important.
That goes for our instructors — the seasoned ones who know what to emphasize, and what isn’t a big deal in the end, and the newly minted teachers who have to call on a kind of courage that isn’t so different than many students. And it goes for the learners in the classroom, many of whom are the first in their families to attempt this big goal of College. They don’t always know what to expect, or what is expected of them. They need grace, and guts, and the gift of high expectations.
Now is no time to be a crybaby, my mom told me. She was right.
Let’s all have a great year, together.
ABOUT THE WRITER — Brad Bennett is the president of Seward County Community College and one of the best things about the job is that the Saints do not offer kindergarten classes. Nevertheless, he still uses some of those elementary school strategies, mainly at all-staff meetings. You can reach him at
