Seventy years ago this January, I walked into my first class, at elementary school, and had my first experience interacting with a teacher.  Next month, I will greet students walking into my class, experiencing my first day teaching a class of my own.  

      A lot has happened between those two days.

      Next month marks a memorable milestone for me. I will, for the first time, formally take on the title of “professor” and jump into a semester of teaching a graduate school class focusing on urban development. It’s a topic I have had directly in front of me for my entire career, as a practitioner, but now I’ll be dealing with it in a teaching mode.  

      Some quick history: I grew up in Chicago, went to school in Boston. I was immersed in science and mathematics, majoring in chemical engineering. One day, a friend invited me to join him in his volunteer work at a Head Start program in Boston, mentoring early school-age children from low-income neighborhoods. 

      I said yes, and it was a life-altering moment for me.

      We drove past several high-end neighborhoods and arrived at a run-down building within four blocks of those expensive homes. Inside the building, the Head Start program was teaching fundamental, basic skills to under-resourced children. I plunged in. 

      On the way home I started asking myself questions, questions I should have asked as I was growing up:

      How did circumstances like this one come into being—an impoverished neighborhood located a few blocks away from an affluent neighborhood? How are the transportation systems working? How did the existing geography of varied types of residences, businesses, shopping, employment centers and recreational amenities come into being? What forces of change are at work that might shape the nature of cities in future years?

      I was hooked. I changed my undergraduate major to urban studies and planning. Upon graduation I took a job working for a regional planning agency and dug into learning the details of what forces direct urban growth patterns.

      What ideas were emerging regarding how to achieve improvements to our built environments? How can we preserve components of our physical and cultural context that inspire us, and that we value? And how best to plan for a future that promises to enhance well-being?

      I’ve now been working on those topics for 50 years, in cities across the country, paying attention to national trends and best practices, and observing/understanding the intricate relationships among economics, public decision-making, politics, well-being, cultural dynamics and human behavior. It’s been a fascinating journey. 

      So now, at this point in my career, I can’t help myself from asking: 

      What have I learned? And what components of what I have learned might have value to others? And finally, what might be effective ways of sharing the knowledge I have acquired with others, in a meaningful way? 

      I’m now about to jump into a possible approach to that third question: I’m going to try teaching.

      Thinking back to my first teacher, in elementary school, and to those that followed through high school and college years, it becomes clear to me that they were passing along the value of what they knew, and stimulating inquiry to new approaches and new answers to the current and future circumstances that we are facing and will face. 

      How cool is that? 

      I want to take a swing at that pitch. In January I will begin teaching with the aspiration of sharing the value of knowledge I have acquired, along with a challenge to students to expand on that knowledge and build new approaches and visions related to the future of urban areas.

      What are my takeaways from this decision to jump into teaching at this point in my life?  Bookends on a career of learning, doing and then passing value along to others? 

      So far, I have enjoyed pulling files and memorabilia to help me include both large and small details from key points along the way. I also am challenged to learn and be aware of the values, methods and approaches of current students, which will be multiple generations newer than many of my experiences, forcing me to attempt to distinguish between the gold standards of my generation and the value of current cultural expectations. 

      Some things never change; some do. The learning challenge for me will be to be aware of which is which. 

      Can I pull that off? I hope so.