With a few minutes left before rushing to the airport for a two-legged flight to Tucson, I started scanning through my aggregator. Interestingly ( or else I wouldn’t be blogging right now), I ran across postings from Christian Long (think:lab), and Chris Lehman (Practical Theory). They both talk about administrators (Christian’s wife and Lehmanns new job opening an innovative high school) who do what they do because they love being teachers.
I can identify. I taught social studies, science, and math to 12 and 13 year olds for nearly ten years. I loved it, except for the first year when I’d signed up for the Civil Service Exam by December, thinking that I’d rather be a rural postal carrier. At some point, during that time, I discovered computers, became seduced, and wanted to teach everyone about them, not just my 8th graders.
So I took a job with another school system as their computer resource teacher, was promoted to Director of Technology, and started spending more time running reports than teaching. So I fled for the State Department of Public Instruction, where we taught teachers about technology and created some really interesting ways to use technology in the state’s classrooms. But then our travel budgets were cut, and we were all fired and asked to re-apply for the only 300 jobs that would be left (this in booming economic times). I fled again, to an office in my basement, where I get to teach nearly every day.
What is it about teaching? Where does the electricity come from when you teach something to someone that they didn’t know before? It’s addictive. It’s the right thing to do.
Ooops! Got to go.
The energy comes from our students, of course!
It’s a well known fact that children have energy to burn. Why, if it were possible to put that energy into a battery we would all be driving electric cars by now.
I myself have had days where I would walk into my building dead on my feet, barely able to keep my eyes open. That feeling doesn’t last all day, because the moment I enter a classroom and see all those young faces looking back at me I get an adrenaline surge that coffee can’t beat.
I always thought teaching was *the* job: both my parents and one set of grandparents were teachers and I couldn’t imagine anything more worthwhile. By the time I retired last June I still thought this way, and I’m still tutoring one-to-one. It’s up there with the other “making a difference” professions – and teachers on my side of the Atlantic have much to learn from the kind of enthusiasm you display here. In Scotland, there can be a tendency to think of teaching as a second best to “glamorous” careers in the media or business. If we allow that to prevail we’ll get second-best teachers.
In the ninth grade I had a particularly unskilled Algebra teacher. I was a quick study for the subject so the book was sufficient for me… however, many other students were struggling. During study hall they would pressure me to just give them the right answers for the homework. Instead of doing so I taught them, on the chalkboard, in the band room, during study hall. Then in my first year of college I was talking to a friend of mine from high school who was taking a college math class and she looked to a mutual friend of ours and retold the story of my algebra lessons; crediting me with her ability to succeed in this college math class. It had been four years and I hadn’t thought much about what I had done, but obviously it stuck with this person. When I think back on why I did that, when all the other kids who ‘got’ algebra would give out the answers, I come to one conclusion… I am perpetually optimistic in the potential of human beings. I didn’t want to give the answers because I believed if someone took the time with the knowledge, these guys could share in the ‘know’. I guess when you ask about what it is about teaching… for me it is the unabashed optimism and belief in the potential for human beings to learn, to grow, to be more…. Someone looked a farm girl in small town Wisconsin some years ago and had that kind of thought. I see it in their eyes when I go home to the farm and I see it in the eyes of the students that I have had the pleasure to spend my time teaching and learning from… we want to believe that if we invest the time and effort the potential will be realized.
I like to think of teaching like this.
When you teach an adult, you’re going to the bank of a river and either widening it a little or narrowing it a little — you make a little change in the river but its already got the direction.
When you work with little streams, a small change in direction…a small exposure to something new. The whole course of the future river changes for good or for bad. It is exciting to work with little streams. They admit that they need to learn things. They hunger for knowledge. They get excited when the learn something new. They actually squeal when they’re happy!
Through all of the things I’ve done with my life — parenting and teaching are the two where I daily get a charge of excitement. (Sometimes I get a charge of another kind but that’s part of it too!)
I love this post, Dave. Thanks!
i think being a teacher is awesome cause i want to be a teacher when i get older after collage. right now im in 9th grade high school it’s awesome here i live in delta junction iv’e always wanted to be teacher ever since i was in 4th grade