Tuesday, May 8, 2012

In the Business of Dreams: A Tribute to Teachers


          Wow!  Is the school year really almost over?  It is indeed a great pleasure to be writing to some of my favorite kinds of people, teachers.  I like people who are just a little odd, a bit peculiar, all right – just weird.  You’re not even offended by that, are you?  Okay, that’s weird, too.  I mean, you are about to get this great summer break, and what do you do? I suppose you’re a lot like most teachers.  In June, you wind down by sipping iced tea, spending time with your own kids, and thinking about the kids who just left you.  Did you do enough with them?  Say enough to them?   Teach everything they will need to make it in the next grade?  Laugh enough with them?  Discipline them enough to make the next teacher’s job a little easier?  Love them enough to get them through the summer, especially the ones who need it the most?  

         In July, you find yourself doing things that “outsiders” will never understand, such as: going to the restroom when you actually need to go, taking at least 25 minutes to eat lunch, reprimanding other people’s children in the mall and grocery store, taking your own kids to swim camp, horse camp, dance camp, basketball camp, and feeling compelled to make everyone line up and use their six-inch voices; squeezing in a family vacation, where you haunt little shops and out-of-town dollar stores for “imported” stuff for your classroom, and finally getting around to doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, and automobile maintenance that are overdue because you didn’t like leaving your school kids with a sub.  

         In August, you turn into a crazed, obsessed shopper. You hit Half Price Books looking for those one-of-a-kind publications that will be perfect for this unit or that one.  I’ve even seen teachers snatch such a find right out from under the nose of an unsuspecting mom!  Ah, the typical, browsing parent can’t hold a candle to a teacher in a bookstore with a mission.  Then you hit every Walmart, Walgreens, and HEB in the metro area to stock up on crayons for 25 cents a box, packages of 2 for a dollar pencils and 20 cent notebook paper, quarter glue, dollar markers, 50 cent map pencils.  You know why they’ve put that “LIMIT 6” sign on the school supplies, don’t you?  It’s because of people like YOU!  Yes, you are a peculiar lot…God love you.      
    
         What in the world is this thing called “education” that makes perfectly rational human beings turn into such oddballs?  Maybe this 1927 definition of “education” will give us a clue.  It defines education as the drawing out of a person’s innate talents and abilities by imparting the knowledge of languages, scientific reasoning, history, literature, rhetoric, etc.—the channels through which those abilities would flourish and serve.  It kind of makes you feel like Plato or Socrates or Aristotle or the Dalai Lama, doesn’t it?  You just know that you have a higher calling.  Since the rest of the world can’t really fathom the way we educators take that definition to heart, they often take it upon themselves to try to define what we do in their own terms. 

Take the media, for example; they try to define education by looking for someone to blame for the ills of society.  We fellow educators are somehow responsible for the drop-out rate, the teen pregnancy rate, the drug addiction rate, the unemployment rate, the welfare rate, the decline of morality, childhood obesity, the national debt…  You get the idea.  It just seems that everyone has an opinion about what we do or should do or should not do or should pay someone to do.  

Even Hollywood takes a shot at us now and again.  Do you remember the scene in the movie City Slickers where Norman, the orphaned calf, is being held hostage by two cowhands who have had a little too much to drink?  In Billy Crystal’s attempt to coax Norman out of his captors’ hands, he says, “Norman, have you been bothering the cowboys again?  You know, you raise them; you try to teach them right from wrong, but they learn these things from their friends.  I mean, it’s the school systems.”

Sometimes, believe it or not, the parents of the little darlings we teach do indeed have ideas about what our jobs should entail.  One particular story from a few years back instantly comes to mind.  I was walking into Walmart one day and happened to overhear a man on the pay phone near the entrance.  In his heated conversation with his daughter he said, “Hey, young lady, don’t talk to me that way; I’m your father.  Don’t those teachers at that school teach you anything?”  I considered kicking him in the knee, but I kind of hated to go that far. 

At least when Benjamin Franklin criticized the universities of the day, he had the decency to create his own school and walk the walk himself.  When Franklin established his academy, the first non-sectarian college in America, he dreamed of an institution that would cultivate in its scholars “an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one’s country, friends, and family.”  That, Franklin declared “should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning.”  Wow!  I like the sound of that!  Educating the young minds of our world is an awesome task that is well worth performing - and worth performing well.

Have you noticed that I have called you “educators,” not “teachers”?  Have you felt somehow just a little more important because of that even though the words are synonyms?  I want you to think of yourselves as educators, with all the glory and power and respect that is conjured up by the term.  Having said that, however, I want you to remember that your students will never say things like: “Hey, who’s the cute new educator in the science wing?” or “I love my art educator” or “I hate that mean ol’ educator.”  Nope, your students will always call you “teacher”, a title that carries the human element of what we do.   Perhaps it is this very thing that makes teaching so difficult to define.  You see, it is not like most professions.  It is an art, defined not by a set of skills, but by the beauty and value of the final product.  To me, even though I am retired, teaching is a way of life, practiced by many but understood by few.  Perhaps this misunderstanding about what teaching is occurs because each of us enters the profession for a different reason:  some for the love of a particular subject, others for the love of kids, still others for the love of the Christmas and summer breaks.  For me, I suppose it was all of these, coupled with a need for order and escape.

You see, I grew up in a home that was chaotic at the very least.  As a little girl, my only solace came from disappearing into a dream world created by my sister.  Unfortunately for me, she was older and was able to go to school before I did.  I cried every morning when she got on the bus, checked the bus stop throughout the day to see if she had returned home, and tore down the long, dusty driveway to meet her when she finally arrived.  Then, hand-in-hand we would drag ourselves back to the war zone we called “home”.

It was our routine to slip into the house, unnoticed if possible, and retreat to our room.  There my sister would turn into my fairy godmother and transform our haven into a classroom.  She would seat the second-hand dolls and raggedy teddy bears in rows on the floor facing a rickety old upright chalkboard given to us by our grandmother.  Then, she would let me choose where I wanted to sit; I always sat in the front.  

After she had her “class” settled, she would ask us to stand and say “The Pledge of Allegiance” (I really can’t remember a time when I didn’t know it).  Then she would announce, “Now, class, we are going to practice our letters” or “our numbers” or “our word list”.  Whatever she had learned that day at school, she taught me when she got home.  By the time I entered kindergarten, I could easily read the Dick and Jane primer and do basic arithmetic.  I didn’t realize it then, but the “bud” of my dream was starting to emerge amidst the adverse conditions of poverty.

From then on I was in awe of teachers.  I studied every part of them:  the way they dressed, the manner in which they directed us to do our work, how they controlled our every move, and even how they disciplined the kids like Michael Kirk, the big bad bully in my first-grade class.  And, like everyone in this room, I grew to love some of my teachers very much.

One teacher I’ll never forget is Sheila Waterman, my seventh-grade English teacher.  I couldn’t wait to go to her class each day which was held in Room 17 of the old Flour Bluff Junior High building.  Ah, Room 17!  Even now the memories of the people and events rush to the forefront of my brain each time I think of it.

I can still see Miss Waterman scanning the room with her sharp, black eyes, catching every off-task move made by her typical 7th-grade students.  I can still hear the Click! Click! Click!  of her pointy-toed high hills on the old wooden floor as she patrolled the room during a lesson.  I loved the clean smell of her.  I admired the stylishness of her crisp, clean clothes and black, widow-streaked hair, admired the “little general” stance she took when dealing with the troublemakers of my 7th-grade year, and appreciated her no-nonsense, straightforward way of correcting or commending us.  And what I liked most of all was that she allowed us to think, not to parrot her views or the views of our parents, but to develop our own, personal opinions.   Freedom to express my thoughts gave me strength and a desire to read and find out if anyone else felt as I did.  Miss Waterman opened an escape hatch for me and offered me a life that, until then, I thought was out of reach for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.  I wanted to be like her.  My dream of becoming a teacher had begun to take a definite shape.  

I can’t even begin to describe to you how my head reeled when I walked back into Room 17 ten years later.  I returned not as a former student visiting my favorite teacher, but as a bonafide, first-year, seventh-grade English teacher getting to live my dream in the exact same room where I had met my role model (and it came complete with a male classmate’s giant spit wad still stuck to that ten-foot ceiling).  

As a side note, it may interest you to know that the sharp-witted, ever-vigilant Miss Waterman, who never taught a lesson without explaining to us how the knowledge she was imparting would help us in our real lives, is alive and well and teaching ESL students at Texas A & M Corpus Christi.  Some of you may know her as Sheila Colwell.  And just for the record, she punished my classmate that very day when he decided to launch his record-breaking spit wad and attach it permanently to the ceiling of Room 17.  He had to write a paper on how his simple, mindless act would affect all who came into contact with “the wad”.  I thought it a fitting punishment, one that required immediate reflection on his behavior and one that I later used myself in similar situations with my students.

Of course, there have been other teachers, friends, family members, bosses, colleagues, and even students who helped me continue to live in my dream world.  For their guidance, leadership, and life lessons, I am eternally grateful.  I am still amazed at how, for 28 years, I was allowed to go to work each day, have the time of my life (except on in-service days), and get a paycheck every month for it.  How cool is that?

Teaching is a calling.  When we are called, like dutiful soldiers, we must strap on our armor, collect our weapons, and march bravely into the war against violence and poverty and ignorance.  No matter what the media says, no matter how many people complain about “those teachers,” you must realize that ours is an honorable profession and one that cannot be replaced by a computer.  Can a computer really be a Miss Waterman?  Can it really solve the problems in our classrooms?  

And, yes, we have problems in the classroom.  However, if we see these problems as opportunities, then we certainly can change the world one kid at a time, and every seemingly menial task will take on a new face.  Having the opportunity to put a misguided youth on the right path by first putting him in his place and then helping him find his place isn’t easy, but it is worthwhile.  Living on a teacher’s salary isn’t a walk in the park either, but I can promise you that your job will be rewarding, if you let it.  Teaching will give you more fun and power than you may ever need or want.

Did I say “power” again?  Yes, I believe I did.  It is that very thing that has everyone interested to some degree in what we do and how we are doing it. In Iraq – and in countries with similar governments - teachers are being targeted by the insurgents.  Why would the lowly teacher be attacked so viciously?  The reasons given in this 2005 Corpus Christi Caller-Times newspaper article will explain:

            “Teachers represent the future.  Their work is educating
the next generation.  Schools, which in Iraq are mostly undefended,
reflect a society’s optimism in itself, and the high value such a
society places on education, learning, and thinking.  These values
are the antithesis of what the insurgents stand for.  They don’t
want young Iraqis who think and reason.  They want unthinking
fanatics who strap on bombs”  (Corpus Christi Caller-Times,
           October 1, 2005).

As teachers, you have the power to save a child, to create a better society, to change the world we live in, and to alter the future.   But, know that from time to time in your illustrious career you will run into parents who will make you pray that you could morph into a pit bull, and you’ll work for administrators who already have. You will have students in your class who think that the parts of speech are lungs and air; that H2O is hot water and that CO2 is cold water; that the four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar; that adolescence is the stage between puberty and adultery; that the pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain; that “RRRRRR, matey” is a word beginning with the letter r; that x is found simply by circling it twice and writing “Here it is”; that Charles Darwin proved that man was created BY apes in a book called The Original Species (later made into a sci-fi movie just named Species); and that Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.  (Ah, thank you, Richard Lederer, for collecting these gems for posterity’s sake!)

At times like these, you may consider getting out of the business completely, sadly something that one third of new teachers do within five years of entering it.  When these thoughts enter your head, think of the ones who call you “teacher”.  Perhaps Pat Conroy, teacher and writer, said it best: “There is no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher’; my heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has.  I’ve honored myself and my whole family by becoming one.”
In closing, I have a favor to ask.  I would like for you to make a promise to yourself by repeating after me this slight re-wording of Peter Parker’s final piece of advice to himself in the movie Spiderman.  Are you ready?

            “Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words:  With great power comes great responsibility.  This is my gift, my curse.”  Who am I?  I am a teacher, and I am in the business of dreams.


God bless teachers of all levels everywhere today and every day of the year!