I am nearly done my Master’s degree. Actually, its weird to say – I have a hard time imagining what I will do with myself when its over. Before I start my phd, that is. Anyway, this semester I am taking a class with one of my all time favorite professors I’ve ever had. He is brilliant. He wears cowboy boots and smells like smoke. I have a total brain crush on this man. His first homework assignment was to write about something that taught us something and what we think makes a teacher “good.” So I decided to include it, today, just to see if what you think makes for a good teacher.
“But you’re a natural,” she said. “You’re the kind of person that is supposed to be a teacher.”
Of course, I was un-phased. I had just come back from an interview at Harper Collins for an opening in their Young Adult non-fiction team as an assistant editor and was over the moon at their offer; although I could not conceivable afford to live in the city, or commute, for what they wanted to pay me. “Something pays less than teaching at an Independent School?” I thought to myself.
I thought some more about what Sue, the ninth grade English teacher, said. We work closely together, planning almost every day and obsessing over curriculum choices, excerpts to share in class and the quality of our students’ writing. I remembered my first year at WH. I was not the kind of person who wanted to be a teacher – I came to it accidentally as a former Expos TA and a swim coach who needed a full time job immediately. I did not grow up lining my toys and teaching them their letters on a small blackboard. When asked “What on earth will you do with a degree in Religious Studies,” the answer, which quickly became a joke in my family, was “anything but teach.” And yet, there I was. Twenty three, right out of college, no teaching experience, no teaching degree, and being handed the keys to my office on the first day of classes. I made that first year up as I went along. It wasn’t so bad. No one died. They asked me to come back. “I can do this for a while,” I thought. But teaching was never the goal.
I think, as of late, my sentiments have changed.
I learn from Sue in two respects. I am in her classroom at least once a rotation. Co-teaching, listening to her lessons, so we are sure to use the same kind of language on assignments, and watching her interact with her students. We often say at WH that she is someone we could never afford to lose. A brilliant teacher who was tenured in the Bridgewater school district, she left public school life and salaries to engage small classrooms of bright students and offer her own children the opportunity at an Independent School education. She is fully engaged, in tune with what children read and write about, and open to exploring forms of rhetoric not normally taught in academic settings. As a new teacher I watched her interact with students with baited breath, taking notes furiously and trying to emulate her in my own way, that first year.
I learned another important lesson from Sue. Aside from writing a syllabus and learning how to expand on my directions on an assignment, I learned how to navigate the system. In Sue I have an ally against the old guard of our department. When they look at me funny as I suggest e-texts, online portfolios, and ditching the research paper all together, Sue has taught me how to navigate the system, how to convince my Chair to think outside the box, how to ask for what I need from administrators.
She has shown compassion and understanding not only to her students, but also her colleagues, and I think this is the key. Its about being innovative, working with what you’ve got, but also helping those coming up after you to do that same. In teaching we so often see fades come and go. Administrators and teachers latching on to the newest idea and then not waiting to see it come to fruition – sometimes results take years, and Sue has taught me that patience and creativity are the ways to figure out what works. The next step, as she frequently reminds me, is to fight for what works.
