I Believe in Teaching by Clark Kolterman

For decades, as many of you know, our family owned and operated a Ben Franklin Store in downtown Seward.  It was a family operation, for almost eighty years and referred to as  Kolterman's or the variety store.  It was occasionally known as the five and dime or, as my Grandpa Kolterman called it- the Racket Store!  I loved that store and the people who shopped and worked there with our family.  I loved the variety of merchandise we offered to our customers and being part of the wonderful community of Seward.  I enjoyed selling and the seasonal changes of the merchandise, working with my parents and friends and being part of the downtown activity.  However, as with the changes in retail habits, the dime stores of the past, including ours, are now a memory.  
 
I discovered, in my relative new career as an educator, that I believe in teaching.  I have switched hats, as I no longer manage clerks and merchandise, but I still enjoy selling each and every day to a room of customers known as my students.  Many of those student shoppers can easily be compared to our store's customers of the past.  They are just looking in their educational shopping experience and trying to find their answers to life's questions. I feel, at times, I am still in the variety store business, only now I am offering numerous educational experiences and sharing the shelves of opportunities to the students in my classroom and the youth I work with in the variety of extracurricular activities.  I have been blessed with this wonderful opportunity of being able to share the variety of offerings to our children in Seward and the entire process has really given a new meaning and joy to my life.
 
One of the themes or slogans of our Ben Franklin store was  We bring variety of life!  and I thought we did a good job of offering a complete selection of merchandise to the community for many years in our Ben Franklin Store.  Today, I feel I can continue to live that slogan, bringing information to life, offering a variety of educational experiences to the wonderful students of our school system, bringing education to life and hope to at times even make a sale!   
 
Back in the 1950's, our variety store took on the concept of self-service, a shopping trend that caught on and is very popular today.  While at times, we could also use that analogy with teaching, I feel that teaching is really personalized selling-as we attempt to find an avenue that relates the information to each student in a way that they will understand.  True, they can shop around before they buy, but I as the salesman presenting the product of education, I am anxious for my customers to purchase the product of knowledge and personalize it to fit their needs.
 
I think my Grandpa Kolterman or my dad would be happy to know that the lessons I learned from working in their dime store continue to live with me today and are incorporated in my teaching philosophy.  Kolterman's Variety Store has taken on a new look and is now a classroom setting, filled with student customers eager to shop the variety of offerings and hopefully make a purchase.  I am there to help make the sale, as I believe in teaching.