“I cried the first night, convinced I would fail. Today I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Ray Kauffmann said about his first day in his new career, as a teacher.
Teaching was not on his radar during a corporate ladder climb for 37 years. Ray grew up in a working-class suburb of Detroit, MI close to where he now calls home. The son of a son of a toolmaker, Ray wanted to break the pattern, and pursued an Aerospace Engineering degree at the University of Michigan, ultimately achieving a comfortable VP profile in the advanced automation industry.
In November of 2023, while cleaning his basement, he gathered a large collection of baseball equipment his son no longer needed, and attempted to donate the equipment to an underserved school near his home. To his surprise, he learned that the school (Pontiac High School) had not had a baseball team since 2009.
That was the seed for the Leading Off Foundation, an organization Ray formed with the mission of giving every kid the chance to play baseball. Leading Off partnered with the Oakland County Sheriff PAL to support a 150-player youth baseball league in the Summer of 2024, the first significant youth baseball league in Pontiac since 2011. Ray was named Volunteer of the year by PAL.
During the season, Ray inquired about getting a teaching certificate, and learned that Pontiac had received a grant for an Aviation Career and Technical Education pathway, but they couldn’t find anyone to teach it. Ray recognized the voice of the Universe, an awareness he attributes to his experience in a Service Space Laddership pod in the winter of 2024. He informed his confused bosses that he would be resigning from his influential position to become a high school teacher at Pontiac High School, the lowest performing public school in the State of Michigan.
Ray currently is finishing up his first year of teaching with 127 students across grades 8-12. He is introducing the high school students to baseball in the indoor training facility that the Leading Off Foundation built in Pontiac High, enjoys connecting with the students by actively engaging in extracurricular activities, and is supporting the development of a U12 tournament baseball team consisting of Pontiac District kids.
While it started with a dream of bringing baseball back to Pontiac, Ray says, “It’s clear now they don’t need a hero. They’re exhausted. They need to know that they are cherished. That is the hardest (and best) thing about teaching. It’s not about coddling them, but rather believing in their potential to change the world.” And for Ray, it is not to say, “I am serving,” but to “become the service.”
