opinion

This upcoming academic year --- my fifth at Balboa Academy, in the Republic of Panama --- will be my swan song.

The experience will be bittersweet. My last time around this track will be bitter because throughout the year I’ll be dwelling on the idea that after June of 2011 I no longer will be teaching. And the experience will also be tinged with sadness because I shall miss Balboa Academy, an institution that I've come to respect and love. 

At the onset of every year since I’ve taught at Balboa Academy I've recorded the milestones. My first year was, without question, the one in which I had to make the most drastic alterations to the way I had been teaching, at the college level, for two decades. Instead of facing a room of respectful young adults --- with a few "mature" students sprinkled in --- I found myself before the daunting task of communicating with adolescents. The authority I had once carried as a professor, as a person who had spent years mastering his subject, no longer held sway before my new audience. Instead, I was obliged to become the architect of a new classroom structure that kept students engaged, or perish as a high school teacher: I had to quickly determine each student's abilities and design a wide range of classroom activities that would reach the entire spectrum of learners.  This was, and remains, a fierce challenge, indeed.

To leave behind the comfortable days of lecturing was a terrifying experience. In my previous life, all I had to do was to stand at the front of the classroom and provide the most entertaining elucidations possible on the topic we were scheduled to cover. To stop being the center of attention and instead make the students’ welfare my central focus was disconcerting. But after an excruciatingly painful first semester, and after a major overhaul in my attitude, I began to enjoy being a high school teacher --- particularly the exploration of new approaches to teaching. Since that initial year, the journey toward becoming an effective instructor has been intellectually and emotionally rewarding.

During my second, third, and fourth years my appreciation of students, colleagues, and the institution continued to grow. And I am pleased that I can say in all honesty that my tenure at Balboa Academy has been joyful.

But the time approaches when I must move on.

Teaching, at least for me, is an all-consuming occupation. In my case, I devote my body, mind, and soul to my students’ growth, as scholars and persons. That means that at the end of a working day --- which starts when I get up at 4:30 a.m. --- I'm too tired to think of doing anything else, including the pursuit of my other passion: writing.

And it is to write that I’m leaving teaching behind.

Writing fiction, in the way I approach the craft, is also an all-consuming venture. When I write a novel I need to inhabit, twenty-four hours a day, the universe I’m trying to create. I must envision and experience everything as my characters do. To create a fictional world requires every molecule of my being, every fragment of my imagination, every waking --- and sleeping --- thought.

Because of the intense concentration the craft requires of me, then, I need solitude, quiet, and to be as free as possible from distractions and other responsibilities. As a result, teaching at Balboa Academy, as much as I've loved it, is incompatible with my desire to continue producing novels.

It will be with profound sorrow, therefore, that I enter my fifth --- and last --- year of teaching high school. I am not looking forward to the day when I am forced to bid farewell to a loving community that has made it possible for my wife and me to call Panama home. I will sorely miss the daily contacts with colleagues and students whose friendship I shall treasure forever. Moreover, the thought that I shall be missing out on future relationships with bright, young individuals is a melancholic one. Yet the lure of adding to my legacy of writings is far too enticing to ignore. 

And so I shall soon start my final year at Balboa Academy. I have grown, and immensely, during my time here --- both as a teacher and as a person. As a result, it will be with a heavy heart --- lightened by the prospect of becoming a full-time writer --- that I enter year five. 
 

Silvio Sirias is an award-winning novelist. For more information, visit his website at http://www.silviosirias.com