Education: Our shining path out of indigence

Their story is simple, but serendipitous. Two college graduates from depressed communities in the South had an opportunity to come to Alaska as teachers -- for one year. It has now been well over 40. As a child, I wondered why they picked teaching. I couldn't stand to be in a classroom, and they chose to spend their lives there.

Poverty is damn near impossible for people to escape. My parents did through education. My mother and I shared our first plane ride. I wasn't a year old; she was 28. My father declined mining jobs in the mountains of West Virginia for university classes. He said he would scratch on top of the earth for a long time before he'd go underground.

I see the decision to be an educator as a calling. Ministering to children more hours a day than their parents often see them, noticing their moods, tracking their learning and praising their successes, takes someone special. Not unlike the calling of the priesthood and, yes, there are good ones and bad ones.

There is a Whitney Houston song that once stuck in my head like an earworm for weeks about children being the future. Really?

I hear complaints about "bad" teachers, and "greedy" teachers who work only nine months a year and are off the clock by 3:30. Usually the people complaining are folks who couldn't last in a room of 6-year-olds for five minutes. Sadly, they always seem to be the ones talking the loudest, bitching constantly about the cost of education.

The same people seem to love the idea of putting kids in jail for a long time. I guess they don't know that education is cheaper than incarceration.

The concept that our school districts should be run like "a business" is cringe-worthy. If we applied business models to schools, we would start by cutting funding for special education entirely. What's the point of sinking thousands of dollars into educating students who won't ever drive a car or live on their own? No profit in that.

Public education is about something other than testing marks and "profitability." Poverty is a trap and for many who escape it, a teacher was the first person who believed in them, who was able to light the spark of a bright child with few resources and let her loose on the world to make her way.

I talked to a friend this week who told me about growing up poor -- until he "discovered mathematics." A teacher took an interest in him. Now he is one of the wealthiest people I know. Education. Public education was the light to a path that would have been otherwise obscured.

There isn't a union on Earth that could get me enough money to spend eight hours a day in a room full of children. They frighten me. The education calling isn't genetic and I marvel at the people who answer it.

Over the next year you will hear much about "school choice." It's code for putting children of privilege in private schools and leaving the less-well-off kids in public ones. Know this: The kids who don't become assets to our communities become liabilities, and the rest of us do not escape the consequences of that outcome.

Carol Comeau is retiring after decades of public service to the Anchorage School District. She's one of those called to the job. She has to be; no one would work for her salary and suffer the kind of grief she gets every day if she weren't.

One of my favorite questions for people running for office is to ask them who their favorite teacher was. If they have an answer, I generally know their stance on education.

With billions in state accounts, the last place we should look to cut is education.

And with individuals in our community willing to invest their careers in teaching our fellow citizens and future leaders, they should hear thank you more often.

So thank you.

Shannyn Moore is host of "The Shannyn Moore Show" on KOAN 1020-AM and 95.5-FM radio, and the television show "Moore Up North" on KYES Channel 5.