15 Years Later

Part 1:  How to Love Your Teaching Job

In an earlier entry, I mentioned that the decision to become a teacher happened during my 2^nd year at a community college.  I saw two teachers model some inspirational behavior and they were a big part of the decision. 

Also, I have ALWAYS been an attention-needy pain in the ass.  How the nuns put up with me as well as they did (#theydidn’t) is a miracle.  See what I did there?  Nuns…miracle…moving on.  Being in front of people, wanting to help them learn difficult math things that I had learned and having a lot of energy seemed like a really good fit.  In the end, maybe I wasn’t wrong. 

First-year teaching is a blur.  It’s the busiest year a teacher can ever have.  You don’t know anything about school policies.  Every lesson plan is brand new, so you’re constantly in ‘create’ mode.  I’m a pretty bad procrastinator, so that’s a tough order for me to fill.  You don’t know how to handle situations that come up in the classroom, especially behavior problems. 

It’s all instinct.  And some of your instincts suck.  Especially if you had nuns yelling at you earlier in life and priests yanking your hair.  But you also have a lot of drive for getting it right.  At least I did.  I was young and on fire to be a great teacher.

Don’t get me wrong, looking over my career, I’d take experience over youthful energy every time.  Experience comes by doing stupid things and seeing how they don’t really work out like you’d hoped they would. 

Examples of doing stupid things?  Sure.  My first several years, I taught Math on actual chalkboards.  Like…with chalk.  This was during a different century.  When kids looked like they were sleeping, I would toss a chalkboard eraser in their direction.  One day I accidentally hit a kid on top of the head and some of the chalk got in his hair.  He did not care for that, so he threw the eraser back at me.  Quite a bit harder than I threw it at him, in fact.  Bad luck for me, he was the starting pitcher on the baseball team.

With all of it happening so fast, I didn’t have time to think about how to react.  Instead of just ducking like a normal person, I tried to block it with what I had in my hand…a single sheet of paper.  I got the paper in the right place fast enough, but the eraser went right through the paper and hit me in the forehead. 

He didn’t throw the change-up, he threw the fastball.  A plume of chalk dust flew all around my head and turned my face and hair white.  I couldn’t really yell at the kid because I did it first.  So I spent the rest of the day saying, “I don’t want to talk about it” to older teachers who did a double-take when they looked at me like they were about to ask a question.  I don’t toss erasers at students anymore.  That’s how you learn.

First year still.  I had stopped throwing erasers.  Didn’t always work out well.  I had moved on to pieces of chalk.  Less messy.  One day, a girl had turned around to talk to a friend while I was writing notes on the board.  I tossed a piece of chalk lightly, like a basketball player shooting a free throw, trying to have it land on her desk to get her attention.  That’s funny to me. 

Well, she turned back around while the chalk was in mid-air and as I had tossed it a little further than I intended…well…the chalk went right down the front of her shirt.  What are the f-ing odds?  As she and the other kids were laughing about the fact that it had just happened, she looked me with an expression that screamed, “What do we do now?!” 

I just said, “You can keep that,” and went back to writing notes with a different piece of chalk.  Then I waited for a really uncomfortable phone call that never came.  I don’t throw things at students much anymore.  That’s how you learn. 

Ok, that’s a lie.  I still throw things.

In all seriousness there’s one thing I had right from the first day.  Be invested in THEM.  This was instinct for me.  Learn who they are and how they work.  You already know the math, figure THEM out.  Many teachers have their own versions of how they approach this.  My approach comes easy for me.  Sarcasm and outlandish behavior. 

This is what I have learned: if you find out what makes people laugh, you will find out a lot about them.  Entertain them by acting like a foolish jackass and you will secretly figure them out.  Start making fun of them without offending them (pro-tip: make sure you already kind-of know them first).  You will break down barriers with people and then it’s so much easier to find out how they prefer to learn. 

Do that and you can teach them anything. 

That part’s always been pretty easy for me and I love it.  In 25 years, I doubt that I’ve ever had a day where I didn’t either laugh with a group of kids or really enjoy some kind of conversation with them.  There are days when you look forward to something like Spring Break, and there are some kids you could do without.  But most of the time, I love being in my classroom interacting with these brats.  Perhaps mostly because we work on the same maturity level. 

And there’s this.  I met my wife thanks to teaching also.  By all accounts, she is a far better person than I will ever be.  We were first year teachers together when I was throwing chalk and erasers.  We have both moved on to a different school now, but we still teach in the same building every day.  We’ve spent the entire span of our marriage enjoying conversations about the students we share.

In that first year, I found what I was searching for professionally.  I found my place in the world by doing stupid things and figuring out how to do the job right.  I also found everything I had been looking for emotionally.  How can you possibly hate a job that has all of that to offer?

Well…

Part 2:  How to Hate Your Teaching Job

The school recently shifted direction on how they wanted teachers to teach.  It’s that simple.  It really is that simple.  After 25 years of making mistakes and finding out better ways to reach the kids assigned into my classroom, decision-makers announced that they had found the “Best Way That Students Learn.” 

And so… they asked me to change what I do.  Well they didn’t ask, they told.  All teachers in our district were mandated to change the way we grade, change the way we report grades, and change the manner in which we give tests.  I understood the theory behind it, but it just wasn’t something that I saw helping our students learn better in practice.  I did it though.  I do enjoy being employed so I did it, but I can’t say that I loved the job like I used to.  For my entire career, I had been trusted to do what I felt was best for my students.  Being told that I no longer had that choice felt like a punch in the gut.

My biggest issue with this shift is that a student who threw an eraser back at me in a classroom in 1998 and a girl who “caught” the chalk aren’t the only two people who taught me how to teach.  I’ve had over 3000 students describe for me exactly what I’m doing wrong so that I can do it better. 

They’ve never done this by saying I was doing something wrong, but by not “getting it.”  My entire existence in that classroom hinges on my ability to get those students to “get it.”  I’d put the following on my teacher-gravestone if you asked me today what should be there: “I got these kids to get it.”  Don’t just ask me, ask them.  I’ve had a lot of students tell me that I was the best teacher they’ve ever had.  I’m not trying to come across as arrogant, but I am definitely proud of how I’ve performed throughout my career.

After all of that, having someone tell me that they know how students learn so much better than I do to the point where I need to change what I’m doing…it just didn’t sit well with me.  Seriously, I’ve spent over an entire generation’s worth of time figuring out what these kids want to hear, what they don’t want to hear, what they need to hear, what they don’t need to hear, and what to say that will get through to them.  Having my opinion ignored or outright dismissed didn’t feel good at all.

I don’t really blame anybody.  These were just people doing their jobs as best as they saw how.  My disagreement was philosophical, not personal.  Why this comes up in our conversation is simple. 

On a certain Wednesday afternoon in Buffalo Wild Wings, while waiting for one of these brats to show up so we can catch up over a beer or two and some wings, I was seriously thinking about looking for another job.  The reason was just as simple.  I didn’t agree with the direction of where the school was heading.  I felt left out, ignored and perhaps even somewhat abandoned.

It had started to occur to me that the winds of fate might be blowing me in a different direction.  And I was starting to listen.  I had put myself in the category of “Looking for a Change.”

But it turns out that there was something that kept me from ever looking too seriously.  I just didn’t realize what it was yet.  Without meaning to, Mike Whildin helped me figure it out.