2013-03-10 - 10:58 p.m.
Confessions of a first year teacher living in Greenfield, teaching at King City.
After working as a Respiratory Therapist for five years which means working night shifts, evening shifts and holidays and dealing with small mountains of sputum and other undesirable issues, I decided that I wanted to do something easier-- something easier like� teaching. I was misguided.
I just finished my first year of full-time teachingEnglish at King City High School in California and I am exhausted. I taught five total classes per day and three of them were different. I taught honors 9th grade, 2 sections of 10th grade and a double period of English Language Development. I have lost 20 pounds that I couldn�t really afford to lose. I had a fairly athletic looking body to begin with. What can I say, I play a little ping pong and I thoroughly enjoy snacking on cucumber slices.
I scanned through a list of occupations and the nub of my pointer finger paused on teacher. �Teacher, that seems easy enough, summers off, a salary, how hard could teaching be,� I guffawed. So in 2009 I put in my application to work towards a secondary school single subject teacher credential in English at California State University Sacramento (CSUS). And the rest is history, which I�m also credentialed to teach. CSET (explain)
My contemplations of the easy life were tempered by memories of a 60 + year old sociology high school teacher, Mr. Nutt, who taught sitting down and leaning back in his chair with his feet kicked up on his desk--hands interlaced behind his neck in a semi- Zen Buddhist deeply relaxed looking state.
�How hard could it be to teach if Mr. Nutt could do it,� I inquired. Mr. Nutt made everything look so easy. His routine was simple. He�d start the class standing, move to his chair and end every class almost asleep. That being said, I learned more in that class than just about anywhere else in high school. His sarcastic pot shots at organized religion, American �style politics along with his general knowledge of the three founding fathers: Marx, Durkheim, Weber and the inequities of social class in America left me feeling a little bit above the fray. After finishing 11th grade sociology I remember thinking I understand how the world works. Everybody else goes around in a fog of unreality and is unaware of their false consciousness. His class was a real confidence booster. He would respond sarcastically to student comments: Innocent student: �I believe that racism is the biggest ongoing problem in America.� Mr. Nutt: �Biggest problem huh�where does your mom work?� Innocent student: �The archway cookie factory.� Mr. Nutt: �Everything going peachy down there at the�cookie factory?�
Innocent Student: �Hell, Yeah we get, like, free cookies of several different varieties all of free King time.� Mr. Nutt, like all good teachers, was probably not for everybody. I�m certain he offended everybody at least once. You did not want to be late for his class or say something inane�ever. It was better to be silent than to risk sounding inane.
It turns out that Mr. Nutt was planting his seeds deep within me from a fairly tender age. It took three years for those seeds to sprout. When they finally did sprout, I had become a full grown social deviant, with a penchant for stealing from Wal-Mart and getting whatever I could for free with no remorse.
Mr. Nutt had encouraged the sociology class to shuck off what he called �the slave mentality.� Which for him was the sense of right and wrong instilled in people from a young age and sent down by property owners, revolving mostly around stealing more or less forms of property. And he did all of this while sitting on his ass. I learned a lot and I didn�t have no crayons or no kindle or no fancy powerpoint. Instead we listened and took prodigious, albeit disorganized notes.
It seemed like what Mr. Nutt did was effortless, but now I realize that he was only able to control a class so effortlessly because he had been teaching high school for 40 years. Everyday when he came into the class, came 40 years of experience with him. He didn�t have lesson plans, because he had memorized them 35 years ago. Knowledge, apparently changes constantly � weekly, daily, hourly, ain�t it exciting! But wisdom does not change and the man�s lesson plans were somewhat fixed. This is no lie, both my father and my grandfather had the man as their teacher too.
As a side note, the man also resembled a fog-horn voiced Buddha. Albeit, only a periodically smiling Buddha, who was also quiet good at coaching basketball, smoking cigars and sending out death stares.
It is true, unsubstantiated opinions form the inflated currency that is education, both in theory and when it comes to practical advice from master teachers and veteran teachers. Educators � god bless them-- tend to have strong opinions about what constitutes good teaching and, what methods to use and so on. As a new teacher, one quickly learns that one-size fits all advice must be at least tailored. It becomes irksome, but not nearly as irksome as opinions about the education system from people outside the education system. Everybody thinks they know what is wrong with education and more frustrating, people have the na�ve belief that teaching is easy.
So you think you can teach? Challenge yourself and give it a whirl. American public schools need good teachers. But be apprised of the statistics. Most teachers will quit within five years.
An analogy would be to compare teaching to going to bootcamp, only, teaching is much much harder. I�ve been to bootcamp.
Teachers do not really have free time. All free time essentially becomes lesson planning time. I work during the week, every weekend day, and in my sleep I wake up with ideas and go to the whiteboard to write them down. It�s basically a gestalt shift. You don�t really every clock out unfortunately.
