Sometimes They Come Back*
I'm sitting here in what passes for my "office" (a tiny room that grows ever tinier as the piles of books and CDs grow larger) looking at a list of questions that I now realize I have seen (and answered) before. Emilie gave me the list this time. Four months ago, it was Brock. Before that, Jennifer. And I even seem to remember Stephanie bringing me similar questions more than five years ago. These people are former students, all of whom I remember fondly. The questions they want me to answer are on a handout from a university course for people who are considering careers in teaching. (For the record, everyone who has ever asked me this favor would make a fine teacher; in fact, some them already are, and others are well on their way.) Previously my answers have been hastily scrawled in the blanks and/or zipped off in a cursory e-mail. Once I was even interviewed formally, and I answered the questions into a tape recorder. Over time (and depending on whether or not I had my Starbucks that day) my answers have probably changed slightly, but as I look at this list from Emilie, I realize that I have covered most of this ground before, some of it in this blog. So, rather than just sending off another hasty e-mail, I am going to take this opportunity to organize my thoughts (new and old) and do some genuine reflection on how I got into this and why I'm still here.
1. Why did you choose to teach? What are the reasons that influenced your decision? This may seem pathetic, but when the time arrived for me to make some choices about a career, teaching was the only "job" I could picture myself doing. I'd completed two and a half years of college, the general courses were done, and I was sort of floating into my junior year, when the university sent me a letter indicating that it was time for me to commit to a major field of study. Reading and writing had always come easily to me, and I already had enough language and literature courses under my belt to clearly see a theme...but I was (rightly) concerned that it might be difficult for an English major to find a job that paid enough to cover the room and board for the rest of my life.
One weekend during this transitional period, I went home to see my family. As I was walking up to the house, a little kid with curly red hair, probably only three or four years old and with a tiny little voice, approached from the yard next door. I don't remember for sure, but it seems now like he actually said, "Excuse me, Mister!" like some kid on a dusty small-town street in an old movie, but that might just be wishful memory. I'd never seen him before, but I stopped and turned his way. He kept a respectful (maybe fearful) distance and said something in that squeaky little voice that I could not hear. I took one step his way and dropped to my knee so we were eye to eye, and he repeated his request: "Can you help me get my Frisbee out of your tree?" I looked up at what had become in my lifetime a gigantic blue spruce on the corner of our yard and saw, ten feet above my head, the lad's errant yellow disk balanced on a prickly shelf of branches. At this point, the most pressing question in my mind was Where are this kid's parents?!, but I figured it was a reasonably safe street and he must be within shouting distance of home.
I got a rake from the garage, tossed it like a javelin in the general direction of the Frisbee, and within a couple seconds the dislodged toy was dropping back to earth. The little kid ran over and picked it up, turned back smiling and then said, as though it had just occurred to him, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers!" I chuckled at that, and replied, "Then I guess we'll have to be friends, huh?" at which I dropped back to my knee and offered my hand: "I'm Mike. What's your name?" He told me, but I can't remember it. He came over and shook my hand a bit hesitantly and then scampered around the fence. I suspect that his mom or dad was on the other side of that fence watching our entire exchange (I hope so, anyway), but I went into the house without giving it much more thought. One of my mom's friends was in the kitchen, and she had seen my interaction with the little redhead. "You are so good with kids!" she crooned as I walked in. "He just walked right up to you!" I was rooting around in the fridge (did that a lot in those days), and I replied, "Good thing I'm not a kidnapper, huh?" To which she responded, "You ought to be a teacher!"
I had always been "good with kids," or at least comfortable in their presence. (I still eat at the kids' table on Thanksgiving!) But until that weekend, when the university was demanding that I declare a major and I had this serendipitous exchange with a little kid whose name I don't remember, I had never considered being a teacher. I think it was at that time that I recognized I had a "calling" of sorts. I had missed the battery of tests that all teaching candidates must take, and rather than wait another year for my chance, I took a graduate-level exam instead. Fortunately I passed, and I was admitted to the teaching program the following spring.
I don't know if this counts as an influence on my decision or not, but my dad taught elementary school for ten years during my childhood. Ironically, this probably should have made me choose NOT to be a teacher because it was part of the reason I never had much of a relationship with him. He taught school as one of two full-time jobs. His "real" job, which he went to after leaving the school and stayed at until long after I had gone to bed, was the one that actually paid the bills for our family, but because my dad was never home, I barely knew him. For me, teaching is the real job, and parenting is just as important. (In fact, in many ways they are the same.)
Also, I had a fabulous English teacher in high school (who was nothing at all like me, but it was in her classroom that I first realized what it meant to learn). Then, the following year, I had a miserable experience under a teacher that I did not get along with. There was always part of me that thought I could do better, so I decided to give it a try.
Finally, I guess I would be lying (or at least committing a sin of omission) if I didn't mention the fact that the idea of getting a couple months every summer "off" also appealed to me, although I later learned that my dreams of using that time to write the Great American Novel were rudely disrupted by the need to pay the bills. I usually spend most of that time "off" doing odd jobs to make ends meet, but sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
2. What are some of the most rewarding aspects of teaching? This one is easy. In fact, I've written about a lot of the "perks" before: Talent Show, Former Students, Teaching is a Hopeful Profession, Speck of Sand, The Quiet Moments. One other aspect of teaching that I like is that in my classroom, I can make things right. I can make it be like I believe the world should be: The Good get rewarded, the Bad get punished. While there are hundreds of rules teachers have to abide by, the classroom is essentially a dictatorship: I can create the atmosphere I want. Yes, there are bosses that often tell me what I have to do, but they don't tell me HOW I have to do it. And since they don't really want to come in and do it themselves, they leave me alone most of them time to do things as I see fit. Short answer: Control. A good teacher has control over the environment in which s/he works...except for the temperature of the room (grumble, grumble). Sadly, the reason many bad teachers end up in the profession is because they have no other part of their lives where they feel such control, so they exert unreasonable control over their students to make up for it.
3. What are some of the most difficult parts of teaching? Can you give me some specific examples? If you have time to read them, I have written about many of the frustrations, sometimes repeatedly: Impatient Students, Needy Students, The Effects of Modern Culture, and What It All Means for the Future, Educational Acronyms, The Evils of Ignorance, Lack of Respect for Teachers, Idiot Parents, Defending Reading to Its Moronic Critics. But if you only have time to read one, this is the one that expresses my main frustrations.
4. Are you more or less confident in your ability to help kids learn than you were before you started teaching? Good Question! And a difficult one to answer! I am more confident in my ability to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and my ability to present information in a way that facilitates learning, but I am less confident in the students' ability (or desire) to take advantage of the atmosphere I create and the information I present. As noted in many of the links above, I feel like I am often battling the popular culture and modern technology for students' brains. As culture and technology take up more and more of students' lives, it is difficult for a teacher to have as much impact. This, of course, requires us to change our methods, but due to the fact that schools will never have enough money to be as cool as the latest video game or tech toy, it appears that we are due for a complete overhaul in the way people are educated. (And at some point it has to address the issue of motivating students and holding them accountable rather than just blaming schools and teachers for every cultural failing.)
5. How effective was your preservice teacher preparation program in helping you learn to teach? What would have made it more effective? It was pretty good. Some of the classwork was a waste of time, but the experience in the teaching "cohort" (the group of people who went through student-teaching together) was very valuable. The most effective thing the cohort did was require us to teach for three weeks during our first semester in the program. This was a very telling lesson that helped me decide if teaching was what I really wanted to do. (A few folks left the program at that point, but I was more confident than ever that I wanted to teach after spending three weeks with a crew of 7th graders.) I also had a very successful 10-week student-teaching experience, thanks in part to the fact that my cooperating teacher just left me on my own for much of the time. (She was finishing her master's degree, and if her principal had known that she was gone, I suppose she would have been in trouble. I was able to maintain the class on my own, so no one ever found out.) It's when you are alone with the students that you know for sure if you can do it.
Here is what would make any teaching program more effective: Teachers (like me) who are still in the profession and still regularly see classrooms full of students ought to be the ones teaching future teachers. (Yes, I know it would require night and weekend classes, but it would be worth it.) As I recall, most of my professors had lots of letters after their names (evidence of their many degrees and qualifications), but none of them had taught in a public school for more than ten years, and some of them had never been teachers of anyone besides college students. They were sadly "out of touch," and it always vaguely rankled me that they were telling me how to do stuff that they hadn't done in so long. This is more important now than ever because technology is changing the culture, students, and the teaching profession so fast that those who aren't in a school every day don't really know the whole story. (So, universities, if you are looking for someone to facilitate a class in practical teaching skills or modern educational philosophy, I am your man!)
6. Do you plan to stay in teaching, or do you plan to move to a different job or profession? If you plan to leave teaching, what are your reasons for leaving? I plan to stay for at least ten more years, at which point I could retire and try something else. I haven't burned out yet, but I definitely understand why people do.
7. If you were asked to describe the process of teaching in one sentence, how would you describe it? Teaching is the art (not the science) of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. (I learned the ADDIE model when I was getting my master's degree in Instructional Technology, an essentially scientific field that tends to ignore the human element of learning -- differing personalities, motivations, passions -- so I tweaked it with my insistence that teaching is an art. No, wait: an Art.)
End Note: If you actually followed all the links, it probably took you a long time to sort through all this, but I think it's a good (and complete, at least for now) reflection of my views on teaching and learning...and other stuff.
*I know this seems kind of twisted, but I took the title of this blog from an early Stephen King story (from the collection Night Shift, 1978) in which a teacher is visited by some former students. It seemed appropriate because I was writing the blog with many of my own former students in mind. I just hope they don't come back to do to me what was done to the teacher in the story.
1. Why did you choose to teach? What are the reasons that influenced your decision? This may seem pathetic, but when the time arrived for me to make some choices about a career, teaching was the only "job" I could picture myself doing. I'd completed two and a half years of college, the general courses were done, and I was sort of floating into my junior year, when the university sent me a letter indicating that it was time for me to commit to a major field of study. Reading and writing had always come easily to me, and I already had enough language and literature courses under my belt to clearly see a theme...but I was (rightly) concerned that it might be difficult for an English major to find a job that paid enough to cover the room and board for the rest of my life.
One weekend during this transitional period, I went home to see my family. As I was walking up to the house, a little kid with curly red hair, probably only three or four years old and with a tiny little voice, approached from the yard next door. I don't remember for sure, but it seems now like he actually said, "Excuse me, Mister!" like some kid on a dusty small-town street in an old movie, but that might just be wishful memory. I'd never seen him before, but I stopped and turned his way. He kept a respectful (maybe fearful) distance and said something in that squeaky little voice that I could not hear. I took one step his way and dropped to my knee so we were eye to eye, and he repeated his request: "Can you help me get my Frisbee out of your tree?" I looked up at what had become in my lifetime a gigantic blue spruce on the corner of our yard and saw, ten feet above my head, the lad's errant yellow disk balanced on a prickly shelf of branches. At this point, the most pressing question in my mind was Where are this kid's parents?!, but I figured it was a reasonably safe street and he must be within shouting distance of home.
I got a rake from the garage, tossed it like a javelin in the general direction of the Frisbee, and within a couple seconds the dislodged toy was dropping back to earth. The little kid ran over and picked it up, turned back smiling and then said, as though it had just occurred to him, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers!" I chuckled at that, and replied, "Then I guess we'll have to be friends, huh?" at which I dropped back to my knee and offered my hand: "I'm Mike. What's your name?" He told me, but I can't remember it. He came over and shook my hand a bit hesitantly and then scampered around the fence. I suspect that his mom or dad was on the other side of that fence watching our entire exchange (I hope so, anyway), but I went into the house without giving it much more thought. One of my mom's friends was in the kitchen, and she had seen my interaction with the little redhead. "You are so good with kids!" she crooned as I walked in. "He just walked right up to you!" I was rooting around in the fridge (did that a lot in those days), and I replied, "Good thing I'm not a kidnapper, huh?" To which she responded, "You ought to be a teacher!"
I had always been "good with kids," or at least comfortable in their presence. (I still eat at the kids' table on Thanksgiving!) But until that weekend, when the university was demanding that I declare a major and I had this serendipitous exchange with a little kid whose name I don't remember, I had never considered being a teacher. I think it was at that time that I recognized I had a "calling" of sorts. I had missed the battery of tests that all teaching candidates must take, and rather than wait another year for my chance, I took a graduate-level exam instead. Fortunately I passed, and I was admitted to the teaching program the following spring.
I don't know if this counts as an influence on my decision or not, but my dad taught elementary school for ten years during my childhood. Ironically, this probably should have made me choose NOT to be a teacher because it was part of the reason I never had much of a relationship with him. He taught school as one of two full-time jobs. His "real" job, which he went to after leaving the school and stayed at until long after I had gone to bed, was the one that actually paid the bills for our family, but because my dad was never home, I barely knew him. For me, teaching is the real job, and parenting is just as important. (In fact, in many ways they are the same.)
Also, I had a fabulous English teacher in high school (who was nothing at all like me, but it was in her classroom that I first realized what it meant to learn). Then, the following year, I had a miserable experience under a teacher that I did not get along with. There was always part of me that thought I could do better, so I decided to give it a try.
Finally, I guess I would be lying (or at least committing a sin of omission) if I didn't mention the fact that the idea of getting a couple months every summer "off" also appealed to me, although I later learned that my dreams of using that time to write the Great American Novel were rudely disrupted by the need to pay the bills. I usually spend most of that time "off" doing odd jobs to make ends meet, but sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
2. What are some of the most rewarding aspects of teaching? This one is easy. In fact, I've written about a lot of the "perks" before: Talent Show, Former Students, Teaching is a Hopeful Profession, Speck of Sand, The Quiet Moments. One other aspect of teaching that I like is that in my classroom, I can make things right. I can make it be like I believe the world should be: The Good get rewarded, the Bad get punished. While there are hundreds of rules teachers have to abide by, the classroom is essentially a dictatorship: I can create the atmosphere I want. Yes, there are bosses that often tell me what I have to do, but they don't tell me HOW I have to do it. And since they don't really want to come in and do it themselves, they leave me alone most of them time to do things as I see fit. Short answer: Control. A good teacher has control over the environment in which s/he works...except for the temperature of the room (grumble, grumble). Sadly, the reason many bad teachers end up in the profession is because they have no other part of their lives where they feel such control, so they exert unreasonable control over their students to make up for it.
3. What are some of the most difficult parts of teaching? Can you give me some specific examples? If you have time to read them, I have written about many of the frustrations, sometimes repeatedly: Impatient Students, Needy Students, The Effects of Modern Culture, and What It All Means for the Future, Educational Acronyms, The Evils of Ignorance, Lack of Respect for Teachers, Idiot Parents, Defending Reading to Its Moronic Critics. But if you only have time to read one, this is the one that expresses my main frustrations.
4. Are you more or less confident in your ability to help kids learn than you were before you started teaching? Good Question! And a difficult one to answer! I am more confident in my ability to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and my ability to present information in a way that facilitates learning, but I am less confident in the students' ability (or desire) to take advantage of the atmosphere I create and the information I present. As noted in many of the links above, I feel like I am often battling the popular culture and modern technology for students' brains. As culture and technology take up more and more of students' lives, it is difficult for a teacher to have as much impact. This, of course, requires us to change our methods, but due to the fact that schools will never have enough money to be as cool as the latest video game or tech toy, it appears that we are due for a complete overhaul in the way people are educated. (And at some point it has to address the issue of motivating students and holding them accountable rather than just blaming schools and teachers for every cultural failing.)
5. How effective was your preservice teacher preparation program in helping you learn to teach? What would have made it more effective? It was pretty good. Some of the classwork was a waste of time, but the experience in the teaching "cohort" (the group of people who went through student-teaching together) was very valuable. The most effective thing the cohort did was require us to teach for three weeks during our first semester in the program. This was a very telling lesson that helped me decide if teaching was what I really wanted to do. (A few folks left the program at that point, but I was more confident than ever that I wanted to teach after spending three weeks with a crew of 7th graders.) I also had a very successful 10-week student-teaching experience, thanks in part to the fact that my cooperating teacher just left me on my own for much of the time. (She was finishing her master's degree, and if her principal had known that she was gone, I suppose she would have been in trouble. I was able to maintain the class on my own, so no one ever found out.) It's when you are alone with the students that you know for sure if you can do it.
Here is what would make any teaching program more effective: Teachers (like me) who are still in the profession and still regularly see classrooms full of students ought to be the ones teaching future teachers. (Yes, I know it would require night and weekend classes, but it would be worth it.) As I recall, most of my professors had lots of letters after their names (evidence of their many degrees and qualifications), but none of them had taught in a public school for more than ten years, and some of them had never been teachers of anyone besides college students. They were sadly "out of touch," and it always vaguely rankled me that they were telling me how to do stuff that they hadn't done in so long. This is more important now than ever because technology is changing the culture, students, and the teaching profession so fast that those who aren't in a school every day don't really know the whole story. (So, universities, if you are looking for someone to facilitate a class in practical teaching skills or modern educational philosophy, I am your man!)
6. Do you plan to stay in teaching, or do you plan to move to a different job or profession? If you plan to leave teaching, what are your reasons for leaving? I plan to stay for at least ten more years, at which point I could retire and try something else. I haven't burned out yet, but I definitely understand why people do.
7. If you were asked to describe the process of teaching in one sentence, how would you describe it? Teaching is the art (not the science) of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. (I learned the ADDIE model when I was getting my master's degree in Instructional Technology, an essentially scientific field that tends to ignore the human element of learning -- differing personalities, motivations, passions -- so I tweaked it with my insistence that teaching is an art. No, wait: an Art.)
End Note: If you actually followed all the links, it probably took you a long time to sort through all this, but I think it's a good (and complete, at least for now) reflection of my views on teaching and learning...and other stuff.
*I know this seems kind of twisted, but I took the title of this blog from an early Stephen King story (from the collection Night Shift, 1978) in which a teacher is visited by some former students. It seemed appropriate because I was writing the blog with many of my own former students in mind. I just hope they don't come back to do to me what was done to the teacher in the story.
posted by MRT at 8:52 AM
2 Comments:
I would consider myself one of your older "students" even though you were never officially my teacher. I was a permanent sub for Mrs. Barney about two years ago and learned a great deal from our chats and your example. I have never forgotten my experience there. I just wanted to say thank you for your post. Your words have helped me decide to finally head back to school for my teaching certificate. Regards, Debbie Burns
Well, I'm glad you chose to teach. Otherwise, I'd have nowhere to go, and no way to improve in the subject I love most.
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