Theresa Madison teaches Grade 10 Language Arts at Brighton High School in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Before I began teaching I had a certain vision of what the world of teachers would be like. I prepared myself for hearing a lot of "when you've been around as long as I have" and "when you get to be my age you'll understand". I felt a sort of pre-embarrassment for all the mistakes I would probably make before I "got it." To me, the profession presented itself as a kind of hierarchy where the big cheese of the school would offer condescending advice and rolled eyes at my rookie mishaps.

Now, only six months into the experience, I am happy to say that my fears were quite wrong. Not too long ago, I went to visit a colleague of mine, Jane, in her classroom during one of her planning periods. She's been a teacher for about six or seven years and at our school for only three. About a minute or two into our conversation, I noticed that the door that adjoined her room with Mrs. Conner's room was open and students were moving between the two. Soon Mrs. Conner herself came bustling in and out of Jane's room, looking for glue sticks and getting a clarification about some graphic organizer.

After asking what was going on, I made a concerted effort to hide my surprise. Jane was asked to take on a smaller class load this year and to spend the remaining time as a literacy coach. She told me that the job included sitting in on classes for a week or so and then working one-on-one with that particular teacher to experiment with different instructional practices and techniques. But Mrs. Conner? She had been teaching for 30 years. This was a woman who had a way with students, parents, and other teachers that I wished I could bottle and sell. It was one thing to smile and nod at staff meetings when younger teachers spoke but to invite a teacher with far fewer years on the job into your classroom was quite a different scenario.

I could only describe the feeling as humbling. Nobody, it seemed, was out to get me, or laugh at my naiveté. The more I began to look around, the more I noticed that many of my colleagues were "age blind." The task at hand was to educate students, and if someone had a better way of doing things or if some workshop came along that could benefit a teacher's practice, then many of these educators were up for another learning experience. I had always heard that teachers were learners for life, but I wasn't sure how many of them bought that old cliché. As it turns out, seeking more for our students and our own practice is not considered a sign of weakness or a stigma by all of those scary veterans; it's simply part of being a professional.