Ah, yes, the open house.  The first glimpse for students and parents to see the promise of what’s to come in the new year.  A chance to see old teachers and meet new ones, to have a fresh start to a new year of learning.  Tonight was my 40th open house, if you count my 13 years as a student in the public schools and beginning my 27th year of teaching.  For those of use who are teachers and who have seen it from both sides, we understand the excitement and nervousness felt by the students as they check out the new surroundings  with new people.  There’s a feeling of accomplishment that you’ve done well enough to advance to the next level on your way to graduation. 1st graders are no longer the “newbies” and 5th graders are ready to rule the roost.  Kindergarteners run the gamut  from overly excited to quiet and shy, all checking things out in their own way.

Parents too are experiencing this with their child and there are definitely levels here as well.  The anxious parent with the first child attending Kindergarten to the old pros who have been through this ritual many times.  The ones who call you by your first name and ask how your summer was and the parents young enough to be your own children respectfully referring to you as “Mrs. Bush”.

Can you imagine this type of thing going on in any other profession?  As teachers, we spend at the very least, four years in higher education, learning this art form we call teaching.  We graduate with a degree and a certificate to teach.  We’re expected to continue educating ourselves for the rest of our careers, and, for the rest of our careers, on a yearly basis, we will invite the public to walk in, see our spaces, and meet us one by one, face to face.

What would that look like say, in a medical/hospital environment?  Doctors are professionals just like teachers, right? Once a year, the public gets to walk all around the facility with their families, checking things out, asking questions, introducing themselves and assuming you’ll remember all of their names later.  You’ll have to make sure you have each room presentable as these people are guests in your facility, so you’ll have to purposefully decorate each space to show that you’re doing what you should be doing professionally for your clients/customers.  And you will have to do this after hours, not during the work day to accommodate those families, focusing on each new face that walks in and making them feel welcome.

You could keep naming dozens of professions which require college degrees and there’s not a one where people can just walk in off the streets and check stuff out once a year.  Wouldn’t that be interesting though?  Like Louis Tully, the accountant in the movie Ghostbusters entertaining his clients at his home, why not open up the office instead?  Clients could check out the record books, meet the colleagues, ask questions about their summer, right?

But here’s the big difference.  While in other professions the bottom line might be serving the client or making a profit, in education we are enhancing and even changing  children’s lives.  We are sharing knowledge, engaging their brains, helping them to think for themselves.  While some people look at our work as a way to create an educated workforce for all of those other professions, we see our final goal as educating and guiding people to become happy, responsible, well-rounded members of society.  One of the benefits of that is hopefully steering them towards a path where they can perform work that fulfills their passion.  Our bottom line is not make a profit or to make ourselves look good.  It’s a profession of service for the good of others.

And that is what I believe the ritual of open house is really for.  It’s a way to begin building those relationships so that we can help students find and develop their passion and become well-rounded human beings.  It’s a way for us to let parents know they can trust us with their most precious possession – their child.  All the diplomas on the wall cannot replace seeing your child’s teacher focus all of his or her attention on your child to make them feel welcome in their new learning environment and watching that child respond with a smile.