“Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”
—Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), Greek novelist and philosopher, best known for Zorba the Greek.
Whenever I think of Labor Day—not just today, the official day of celebration, but at any time of the year—I hear Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Hear America Singing.”
In spirit, it remains one of the most comprehensive and inclusive celebrations of labor I know. Whitman exalts the varied carols of America: mechanics, carpenters, boatmen, masons, shoemakers, wood-cutters, mothers, wives, girls, fellows—
“Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.”
Even though Whitman’s intent was to celebrate all labor, I’ve often wished he had stretched his litany further: to nurses and caregivers, to social workers and librarians, to the quiet hands who stock shelves at dawn or clean buildings long after everyone else has gone home. So many vital songs go unsung. And yet, by inference, perhaps he did include them—since he was singing America itself, and since his deepest wish was to be the poet of Democracy, the poet of the people, all people.
I especially wish–maybe with a touch of occupational selfishness–that he had included educators—those whose labor shapes every other voice in the chorus. Educators labor not with saw or chisel, but with patience, persistence, and vision—tools just as demanding as Whitman’s mechanics and masons. Their labor is not confined to the classroom or the clock. For many—certainly for me—it was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I went to bed thinking about my students and woke up thinking about them again. Lessons, endless papers, worries, hopes—and encouragement, too—followed me everywhere. Teaching was never a job; it was a calling that claimed my whole self. Like countless other educators, I gave my students my all—and then more.
Educators also give second chances, ignite new beginnings, and shape futures that might otherwise have been lost.
A day never passes that I don’t think about one or more of the bridge builders who taught me—my third-grade teacher who handed me Robert Frost’s poems and lit a lifelong love of language, or my high school biology teacher who welcomed us to his desk day after day, giving us not just knowledge but his time, his presence, himself. My college and university professors, too, showed me that education was not a finish line but a lifelong pursuit. Their labor was quiet, personal, and lasting.
I know this firsthand. I walked the bridge that educators built for me, and in time I became a builder myself—pouring my own labor into students, carrying them forward just as others once carried me.
And when I needed a bridge of my own, the Virginia Community College System gave me not just one opportunity, but two. In 1998 after I left the Library of Congress, it opened the door for me to finally live my childhood dream of teaching English. And years later, through the Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship Program, it offered me something even rarer—a second chance to complete research I had set aside nearly forty years earlier. That truth has reshaped how I see education itself. It’s not only about beginnings. It’s also about returnings. Sometimes, opportunity does knock twice. The Virginia Community College System gave me mine.
It gave me that second chance with Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina. What began as a graduate paper in 1973—sparked by the encouragement of mentors like Calhoun Winton and J. A. Leo Lemay—has at last found its full voice. The forgotten essays of colonial Charleston have their rightful place in American literary tradition, and I have had the rare privilege of finishing the work I once left behind.
That’s why I dedicated Unmasking The Humourist to the Virginia Community College System and its educators:
―For the Virginia Community College System―
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Dedicated to transforming lives and expanding possibilities throughout its 23 colleges, proving that education is not just about learning, but about unlocking potential, shaping futures, and ensuring that no great idea goes unfinished.
And because words alone weren’t enough, I decided to act on that dedication. I have never forgotten the benefactors—sometimes unseen, sometimes unknown—who helped carry me across my own bridge: from a coal camp childhood to a college classroom, to a professor’s life I once only dreamed of. Their quiet generosity made my journey possible.
All proceeds from the sale of this book
will be donated to
The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education
On this Labor Day, I hear Whitman’s chorus again. It grows stronger, more complete, when we hear the steady song of educators—singing what belongs to them, and to none else. Their song is the bridge that carries not just students, but all of us, forward.
The Wired Researcher 