When I arrived at Bancroft Elementary School in the tiny mining town of Bancroft, West Virginia, in the late summer of 1969 I intended to complete my masters degree and two years of teaching in the National Teacher Corps while I sought to discern my true calling in life. It took a number of years for it to penetrate my thick skull that teaching was and is my calling. During the next five decades I was privileged to have my life enriched by hundreds of pre-teen youngsters, many of their parents, scores of fellow teachers and administrators, and all sorts of other folks who have served as resources of one kind or another for my teaching.
In the eight years since I retired from full time teaching I have relished the world's greatest retirement job as a "storyteller/naturalist" at Arrowhead Environmental Education Center introdub=cing hundreds more children to the wonders of the flora and fauna of Georgia.
But today marked a sentimental final close of one chapter.: The very last group of "Mr. Shaw's Stars" graduated, most from Armuchee High School. I have tried the last years to attend the AHS graduation to celebrate this special day with those beloved ten-year-olds now on the cusp of their adulthoods. I wish I had made that a tradition from the beginning of my career.
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