Response to the 9 things you should never say to teachers

I admit it, I scroll down the Huffington Post for my news. I feel slightly queasy doing it, but there are some things there I appreciate about it, specifically that they have an education page. Currently education news is a little slow, but I did find this, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/never-say-to-teachers_n_3990648.html which intrigued me as a teacher. For the record, I have only heard one of these statements before, but I have heard other comments that are more offensive than some of these. Here are my responses to a few of these:

1. "Teaching sounds like such a sweet gig. I mean, you get summers off."

"During the summer, many educators teach summer school classes, participate in teacher training, earn advanced degrees and plan for the next year."
All of this is true, but my district didn't offer traditional summer school, only offered two days of paid training, and one paid day of prep. You know what most teachers do during the summer? THEY WORK! As we all know, there is very little money involved in teaching, and most teachers need to work over the summer to support their family, that is why this is number one on this list.

5. "It's awesome that the point of teaching is to make a difference, but do you really think any of your students will remember you?

First of all, I could be wrong in thinking that everyone remembers a teacher they had at some point in time, even the idiot who asks the question thinking that it is correlated to teachers making a difference. Secondly, I think teachers and non-teachers would generally agree that teachers are teachers in order to make a difference, but I think the definition of what is a difference would be different between the two groups. While the community and politicians might think that the difference is graduating students into prestigious universities, raising test scores or teaching disadvantaged Latinos calculus (or more recently inner city kids how to enjoy writing), teachers would probably think of smaller victories. As I think of these small victories, most are achieved through kindness and mercy. Like helping students through bad days by giving of time and words of encouragement, spending time before or after school helping students master an important concept or giving students a shot at redemption to help them make the grade. I am actually not good at any of those things, but I know there are teachers out there who are, and that's great. My goal in special education was to inspire students to enjoy doing math and believe they could do more than they had done in the past. Nobody passed an AP test but I can at least say that there was a change in student attitudes while I was at Thompsen and Union. This goal translates into fewer truant students and dropouts, higher grades and test scores, and more graduates. Does it make students remember me? Who cares?

7. "If you get tenure, you pretty much can never get fired, right?"
"As noted in a National Education Association blog, 'Tenure is about due process -- not about guaranteeing jobs for life. And it’s not about protecting 'bad' teachers -- it’s about protecting good teachers.'"
This comes up in every discussion about teacher quality, but there's a shift against tenure in most conservative-run states. Everyone in the district I taught in has a one year contract and the district is under no obligation to renew it. I have seen teachers and administrators alike 'pushed out,' so to speak, so this doesn't really apply to me. But if I taught in California I'm not sure it would offend me.

8. "Can't you just sit back and let the textbook teach for you?"

Some teachers have done this. It is not incredibly effective, exciting or popular, but the answer to the question is yes. I have not seen it done in schools I have taught, but I had a class in high school that fit this definition, and I think that if I was the only one this question wouldn't have made HuffPo's list.

My overall synopsis of the questions is that I don't think people are really stupid enough to ask them. Most of them require the questioner to not value the traditional public education model either for political reasons or personal (like having the same world history teacher that I did). These are the same people who would ask questions #3, 6, 7 and 8 because they think teaching is a super easy job that offers a lot of autonomy and cushion because of the superpowerful teachers union (applicable to unions in California, Illinois, and New York in particular). These are generally the students who did not need extra help to pass their classes, or underachieved and didn't care. As parents they start charter schools to try and keep bad teachers out of their kids' classrooms, which is noble, I guess, but not entirely necessary in my opinion.

I'll end this post with a story of the most offended I've ever been as a teacher. To be honest, it may be the only time I was offended by a parent or anyone else when talking about my profession. It happened when I was a student teacher at parent teacher conferences. I was teaching health education at the time and a parent told me I should have gone into teaching math. I guess I was offended because I did-and still do-believe teaching health in school has great merit, and it actually is more applicable to students' lives and can make a bigger difference in the big picture for students as well. Looking back on it, his tone was more offensive than his words, because I would have gladly been a math teaching major if I wasn't already three years into a political science degree when I decided I wanted to teach. Health was the fastest way to become a teacher, but I got hired to teach special education instead because of my merits as a teacher, and now I teach math anyways. 

State Reciprocity

The term "state reciprocity" is used by universities to describe a degree or license awarded that is recognized by other states as well. Most schools claim to award teaching licenses or certificates that are recognized by nearly every other state of the union. So with my certificate from BYU I've been applying for jobs all over the country, including 19 states and the District of Columbia, not to mention a job in Calgary, which was both my first application and my first rejection letter (no one promised reciprocity with other countries). I thought expanding my horizons would give me a better chance at getting a job, and at first that idea held true. My first real interview (not a screening interview) was with a school in Wellton, Arizona--a town known for its massive feed lot and more recently, for a psycho shooter that drove into Yuma. The interview went well and the principal explained the licensing process I'd go through upon getting the job. It was easy-take a few ESL courses and teach for a year, then apply and BAM, it would be mine. Well, I didn't get the job, and my count is at 132 jobs I've applied for, and among the rejection letters/emails, most have been from out of state schools. I didn't think anything of it, but then I had a screening interview with Phoenix Union High School District. The interviewer asked me if I had started my application for an Arizona teaching credential. I answered "Why pay over a hundred dollars for something I only need if I actually get a job?" He answered that every teacher in the district must hold and Arizona teacher's license at the beginning of the school year. So much for state reciprocity.

The idea of the state having control over its education system is based solely on the founding fathers failing to enumerate public education as a power of the federal government. It would take a constitutional amendment to create national control of public education, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. That's because even though everyone in the country believes that we should provide free public education to all children we must A) stick to the constitutional verbage written by the founding fathers (who did not believe in national education--except for Thomas Jefferson) and B) localize control of what our children are learning.

Local control is one of those phrases that gets a lot of use and a lot of respect in education policy circles. This makes a lot of sense to me because funding for schools is locally based, so the control is locally based. Funding does come from the federal government, but the bread and butter of every district is local. States try to standardize things and streamline their programs, which creates this whole mess regarding teacher training reciprocity, not to mention high school education reciprocity.

But this is the reason for public education. Any nation's public education is built for a single purpose, which is to indoctrinate the youth of a nation with the culture of the governing class. However, because our national government is handcuffed from controlling education, the indoctrination includes the fundamental beliefs of the predominate culture of the state and in some cases even the areas of school districts. In America we created public education to perpetuate the idea of the American Dream (one's ability to succeed in "attaining the fullest stature of which (he or she) is innately capable, and be recognized for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position). That is the only common stream in the education system--anyone can succeed (We might also compare this to the myth of the medals in Plato's Republic, but that's a story for another time). Our education system lacks a common thread because of the need for state and local control, breeding the indoctrination of state and local culture, not national culture. This organizational fault is part of the reason we see so much disparity between states and between urban-rural-suburban schools. Because the curriculum and teacher credentialing standards are different from state to state and district to district the education of students from one state or district to the next will be inherently unequal.

So ending this on a slightly different vein than I started, I would like to say a word about winning the future: it won't happen unless we centralize our educational system. It's the only way we can properly work together as a nation to meet the changing needs of the American workforce. But there are two reasons this will never come to pass: 1) Conservative interpretation of the Constitution and the difficulty of creating an amendment empowering the federal government to provide public education and 2) America is not a 'melting pot' as much as it is actually a grocery store. Yes, there are a variety of cultures here, but they are--for the most part--compartmentalized into different regions and even different areas of cities and towns. Therefore the predominant culture within the district will beg/cry/fight for its right to push its agenda (strong words, I know, but it is what it is) on the children in its jurisdiction, and it will do so under the assumption that it is what the parents want and what they believe is best for their children--regardless whether or not it is what is best for the country represented by the flag to which they pledge allegiance every morning in the classroom.

The System is Broken

"The system is broken." That's what they've told us recently, at least. It seems to be code for, "We don't have any money to fund public works, so we're cutting budgets, restructuring and blaming it on 'problems' in the system that we were too lazy to fix before." We've heard it about immigration, the BCS, collective bargaining in Wisconsin, and the most popular target--education. Some of these claims are true--the immigration situation is ridiculous, as is college football's method of finding a national champion, as is the public paying for the equal benefits and retirement plans of uneducated careerist bureaucrats and members of the most underpaid and consistently educated profession in America--teachers. While I do not believe the education system is 'broken,' I do believe that parts of it are, and that few or none of these parts are being addressed by state legislatures. I started three posts in the last two months about various problems I have with some states' new education plans (particularly Idaho), but they were all filled with bitterness, Idaho election results and budget histories, and Glen Beck-esque conspiracy theories about Watson on Jeopardy! being the new computer overlord of Idaho--and I don't really want to subject anyone to any of that.

This post is about something in education that recently made me thing, "The system is broken." I read about it a year and a half ago in the first chapter of Goodlad, Soder and Sirotnik's 'The Moral Dimensions of Teaching.' The problem dates back further than I'd care to research, but in 1961 it was amplified when Yale hired C. Vann Woodward with the highest salary for a professor in the country and was not required to teach at all in his first year. To many of you who have been to a university lately, this may not surprise you--part of being a professor is doing research. In fact, they are required by the university to get published in order to stay on faculty. We've all had professors who were awful, horrible teachers, yet were kept on staff because of their amazing research. Even in schools of education the faculty is not filled with highly-experienced teachers who have been hired because they were rock star teachers. It's filled with Faustian academics who research high up in their ivory towers, then come down to classrooms where they lecture to future teachers, preparing them to do a job they've never done themselves.

I was lucky enough to have as the supervisor for my major someone with years of experience as a teacher, who was sought out by the university to get his PhD and teach for BYU. One of the faculty members on the hiring committee told me that a principal once told him that my professor was 'the best teacher he had ever seen in all his 30 years in the school system.' I believe it, too. He was a great influence for me to be a teacher and taught me more than any of those learned sages of research in the McKay School of Education. I thought that this professor of mine was so awesome that I wanted to do what he did--get pre-service teachers pumped and prepared for the careers n teaching ahead of them.

So it was to my great surprise and delight that on a visit to his office in January, he told me the university wants another supervisor for the major, and that he wanted me to get my degree and come back to do the job. I recently talked with him about choosing graduate schools and degrees. He told me to get a master's in statistics to go along with my doctorate to reinforce my research skills. I've applied for a lot of jobs teaching social studies because health teaching jobs are so hard to find, and he told me not to worry because I have an undergraduate degree in health and all they care about is research anyways, and they're just looking someone who can do that, has a PhD and is willing to do the job. I was shocked. Here I thinking that he was sought out and hired because he was one of the greatest health teachers in the Utah valley, and here he was conceding that his expertise wasn't even why he was hired for the job--it was because he was willing to go to school and get the training to be qualified to do it.

So I came home excited for graduate school, but also disappointed because the system was broken. Universities don't want the best teachers to prepare teachers, they want researchers who will get the name of the school printed underneath their own name in academic journals. I began to worry about whether I'll be a good enough teacher to feel that I warrant the job for which I'm preparing. Since my realization about the lack of professional teaching experience in teacher preparation programs I've wanted to research the problem, but now I feel like I'm already on the road to becoming one myself. It's very possible that I'll never get the chance to teach health. States such as Idaho are making it an online course in order to cut costs (yeah, I know, totally picked the wrong teaching major, but the fact that it was the shortest teaching major really should have been a clue). But even if I teach Utah history for five years I can get this job because I'll have my undergraduate degree, my student teaching experience and a few years of in-classroom teaching experience.

Well, anyways, no use worrying about this when I can't even find a job in the first place...first things first.

Student Teaching

I'm two weeks into student teaching. I'm absolutely loving it. I teach two periods of junior high health alone and team teach another with another student teaching. At times I feel like I don't want to collaborate at all and I'd much rather just do the whole thing myself. But then I realize how blessed I am to have so much prep time and I think about what a different experience this is from other student teachers'.
First of all, my mentor teacher is great. She's been teaching for 12 years and never had a student teacher. For 11 years she taught science and has only taught health for 1 year, so she's just beginning to be a health teacher and is still open to new ideas. Lots of student teachers are stuck with mentor teachers who are totally stuck on doing things the same way they've been doing them for the past 25 years. My mentor teacher is awesome. She lets us come up with our own unit outlines and is fine with everything as long as we follow the state standards. It's really a liberating experience as opposed to what I've heard some of my friends going through. And even though we are her first student teachers, she's been a mentor teacher for quite some time, now, and is always willing to give advice and observe and help us become better teachers.
Second of all, It's SO NICE having so much time to prepare lessons, grade papers, evaluate how certain lessons went, and make the appropriate changes so I can do better next time (when I'm on my own). What this really feels like is a 'test run' sort of semester, where I have an idea of what I want to do as a teacher and I get to test it out in the classroom every day to see if it works. I feel like this should all be part of some grand thesis or disertation and that I should be collecting data and running regressions and getting a grad degree. To tell the truth, it's actually part of the only assignment that I have to turn in for the course, called the Teacher Work Sample. Basically I have to prove that I can do what I'm doing by putting it all on paper. I just happen to be in a position where I have the time and resources to put a lot of time into improving what I've done while bringing minimal work home. Quite the blessing, really.
Third, I'm not nearly as tired as I would be if I was standing up teaching 6 lessons a day. Wow, what a piece of work I'd be coming home from that. Instead, I'm teaching just half of that at the most, and I still have energy when I come home. That's really nice.
Lastly, my fellow student teacher has had different experiences and has different ideas than I do about how to teach. At some times, I feel like this is exactly why I don't want to team teach, but in all reality I should be greatful for the different ideas that she brings to the table. I'm only one man, and I'm willing to see good ideas of how I can help kids learn the material.
Other than those things, I really can't think of another reason I wouldn't want to do it myself. But if for nothing else, those four reasons are enough to make me grateful for the experience of team teaching. Overall I can't complain. I really enjoy all the free time, especially since I'll be needing it to study for my next two Praxis exams--Biology and Social Studies.

The Stole of Gratitude

I didn't even know this existed, and once I did know I didn't know what it was. When Courtney graduated she showed me this as she was buying her cap and gown:

"A stole is not a symbol of academic honor. It is an optional accessory that is worn during the commencement ceremony. After the ceremony, the new graduate presents the Stole of Gratitude to someone who provided extraordinary help or support, i.e. parents, relatives, or mentors who have helped with wisdom, words of support or financial assistance. Immediately after graduation, the graduate may take the stole from around his/her neck and place it around the neck of the recipient. More than one stole may be worn during commencement, symbolizing that there are multiple persons destined to receive a Stole of Gratitude."

She gave the stole to her father in a very emotional scene following the immensely boring graduation ceremony. Her father had a great deal to do with her academic pursuits and eventual graduation, and it was clear that before we knew what a Stole of Gratitude was, that he was destined to receive the Stole of Gratitude.

As I prepare to walk across the stage and receive my empty diploma cover from an aged professor dressed in the robes of the false priesthood it is not as clear to me to whom I would bestow a Stole of Gratitude. There have been a number of people to whom I feel indebted for the contribution they have made to my education, and no clear recipient of the Stole. Since I cannot clearly determine who should receive a Stole and I have no intention of spending $19 each a stole for each person I think of, I thought of recognizing those who have given their wisdom and words of support. These include professors, family, and maybe a friend or two.

Ray Desagun--High school economics and government teacher. At this age I was naive enough to think Libertarianism was pretty cool and that I wanted to be a speechwriter. What I gained from that class was more than just TINSTAFL, supply and demand and that Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were both Jews, but I learned that I would enjoy teaching government.

Prof. Ray Christensen--Three years ago I was writing a personal statement in his PoliSci 200 class and he and I were discussing what subject I was passionate about in political science to figure out some topics I should write about, or what I would do after I graduated or something like that. I told him that I wasn't passionate about politics or the law, but about education. He then asked me why I was majoring in PS, and I said I was interested in politics and I liked learning about it, but that I didn't like writing about it (something I got over--but not easily). That discussion stuck with me as I continued to ponder on what I would ever do with my degree. I credit my decision to teach to this one conversation, to his questioning of my plans for the future.

Prof. Legrand Richards--I took the class "Foundations of Education" at the advice of my advisor when I told her I wanted to go into education. By luck of the draw, I picked this class. We read some excellent literature and related it to education, and more importantly, teaching. The elementary education majors in this class with me were less than interested in the material, but for me it made a great impact. After going through the weekly readings I absolutely fell in love with the idea of being an educator.

Cougar Hall--He's the advisor for school health education majors, and taught the first health class I took: Sexual Education in the Curriculum. It was in the practicum class, though, that I took from him I got really excited to teach. I will be forever grateful for being introduced to The Education of Little Bear, and for the example he showed of the excitement he had for teaching. Not long ago he was a high school health teacher, and I was recently told by one of the individuals responsible for hiring him at BYU that he was the best teacher the principal at Timp High had ever seen in his 30+ years of experience. That really isn't that hard to believe. I hope I can do somewhere near as good a job as he has done in my years ahead.

Coach--My first inspiration to teach came from my dad, who has taught math for just over 20 years now. His worthiness of the Stole can be traced to his simple instruction to me as a child, "Be smart, don't fart." Such wisdom cannot be found in the lines of textbooks or even scripture. He always showed interest in my college education when I was studying political science, but since my switch to education, I've really had some good discussions about the wants and needs of the system. He has brought up many things that I want to look at and evaluate on a policy level and he has helped me grow even more interested in my ventures into education.

Courtney--When I didn't get an internship with the Utah State Legislature I looked long and hard at what I was going to do with my life and degree. I wanted to go into education policy, but after I had taken The Sociology of Education, I decided that I couldn't do so without teaching. Courtney, who had changed her graduation plans to meet mine so we would be done at the same time, was very supportive and even found the shortest teaching major for me to complete. She has been hard at work for the past year, allowing me to go to school without necessarily needing to work, and take 51 credits over the last year. I am so grateful for Courtney's help in coming to where I am today.

I guess this really turned into a 'who influenced me to be a teacher,' but that has been the motive of my education for the last two years. The work I have done in school is directly related to me wanting to teach and improve education, so anyone who influenced me in my desire to go into education is hereby a recipient of this blogStole.

Jaime Escalante

For those of you who have never seen Stand and Deliver, you really ought to. Jaime Escalante took a job to teach math in an Los Angeles high school that was failing state standards back in the early 80s. He believed the kids would rise to the expectations of their teachers an offered a calculus class for students so they could take the AP exam. I highly reccomend this film to anyone who hasn't watched it. A couple of weeks ago I watched it while I was doing my homework and found myself welling up with tears at the end, just like every other time (except the time I watched it my Freshman year in Spanish class. No place for tears there).
This past week Jaime Escalante died as a result of bladder cancer that he had been fighting for some time now. We have lost a great teacher, but his legacy will continue as long as there are teachers out there who stretch the potential of their students and help them realize that they have the ganas to succeed. I doubt I'll end up in a High school comparable to that of Escalante's, and because I don't teach a subject matter that anyone cares about taking a standardized test for, I won't ever be praised for raising test scores. But the impact Mr. Escalante made on his students wasn't just that they got a couple of college credits. He changed the entire reason his students were there at school. Every year more and more kids took calculus from him and more and more kids passed the AP exam. He changed the culture of the school into one where students saw what they could become and had the ganas to be more than people on the outside believed they could be.

Teaching by Living

Granpa gives a lot of good advice to Little Tree throughout this book, but he treats wisdom with more than mere lip service. I noticed in the chapter on church-going and in other spots in the reading that Granpa regularly practices what he preaches. He showed the man how to make the chair that he gave to him. Little Tree explained that Granpa always believed that showing a feller how to do something himself was better than just giving to him.
As teachers we must practice what we teach. Do I put on a mask when I go into the classroom that smiles and loves the students? This actually seems easy enough, but soon the act would grow old and we would seek a different line of work. The type of teachers we want to be in the classroom should also be the type of people we want to be in our homes and relationships. Especially as health teachers, we should be an example of healthy living. We shouldn't get plastered on the weekends or take up chain smoking to cope with the stress of being a teacher. We should live a physically active life and wear a seatbelt and wash our hands and cough into our elbows. Teaching health isn't just presenting curriculum, it's presenting a healthy way of life. As members of the church are admonished to be living examples of the blessings of the gospel and testify of those blessings and from whence they came, we as health teachers should be shining examples of the healthy way of life we teach and advocate a healthy way of life to our students.

Trust, Risk and Learning

Granpa's trade is whiskey making and considers himself pretty good at it. Since it's the only trade he knows, he teaches this trade to Little Tree (five years old at the time). Leaving the still one day, a couple of men were set out on the path and they had to hide the still and split up so Granpa could get away with the bulk of the wares. Little Tree was confronted and chased by the men, but made it back home safely to find Granpa and Granma waiting for him. In another chapter Little Tree bought a calf from a "Christian man" for $.50, which died on the way home from town. Granpa explained that if he would have stopped him from buying it, Little Tree would have always looked back on the day feeling sore at Granpa. If he would have told him to buy it, he would have blamed the calf dying (and losing the $.50) on Granpa. "Ye'll have to learn as ye go."
The close call coming back from the still and the poor trade with a Christian really cemented Granpa and Granma's teaching methods for me. They knew that Little Tree would encounter these situations in life and did not hide from it. In fact, I believe that they expected him to find him self in a similar jam later on in life and that he would need to make a decision then as well. Although only five years old, they were not going to sheild him from the world, they were willing to let him experience it. It's hard to believe that you can give a kid money and not expect him to spend it. Or give him responsibility in an illegal whiskey operation and not expect him to run into trouble at some point. Granma and Granpa knew the risks associated with allowing Little Tree to be an active participant in their family; to be his own, really. I take them as folks who can assess risks in life. The way they let Little Tree learn was not without risks, but the most protective way of learning doesn't come without risks itself.
We have no choice as health educators but to teach according to the political safeguards made by policymakers, local education administrators and school boards. This makes it difficult sometimes to be as effective as we'd like. We must trust that there is enough education going on in the home, church or other auxillary institution that our teaching is not necessary. But really, the only subject safeguarded in sexuality education, and we have free reign over the rest of the course. We aren't the parents and cannot protect them from the real world even if we wanted to. Many high schools are more like the real world from which some of kids are being protected than the city streets are. This is why it's important to teach health effectively and efficiently in the junior high and high schools, because parents may not be enough to prevent unhealty lifestyles, and in some cases promote them.

New Year, New Reading List

I think it's perfectly normal to keep a journal of what you read on your blog. I'm pretty sure people do this on other blogs and have entire book clubs where you can participate by commenting on the lead reader's post of a chapter. In fact, I'm doing this in one of my classes this semester. In my Practicum and Curriculum class we're reading the book The Education of Little Tree (Forrest Carter), and for every reading our professor makes a post and we all post comments of something we learned from the readings on it as part of a pass/fail assignment. I like this because I'm sure that I'd do the same thing on my own while reading the book. The book is written about an orphaned five year old Native American who goes to live with his grandparents out in the mountains. The book is great, and I'd recommend it to any and all. I figure I might as well share what I'm learning on my blog, too, because that's what I usually do when I'm not excited about concerts or complaining about sports, politics and the politics of sports.

So the book consists of Little Tree recounting experiences and learning moments with Granpa and Granma. You can tell right off that Granpa is the star of this book. From the second page when Little Tree says, "Granpa seldom spoke in a crowd, but when he did, folks listen," you knew that he would be saying things that you'd want to remember. So far that's been the extent of everyone's posts on our class blog, words of wisdom from Granpa, as well as his incredible ability to teach powerful lessons based on simple observations of nature and society.
In chapter two, while catching turkeys together, Granpa taught Little Tree about The Cherokee Way. I was impressed with Granpa's assessment of Little Tree learning The Way. He told Little Tree how animals in nature select their prey, and how in doing so they can support their livelihood in the future. After explaining the principle he then allows Little Tree to select the turkeys they would take home with them. As teachers we must teach and not just test, but help our students understand that their understanding of the subject will effect the way they make decisions in life (something a geometry teacher rarely has the opportunity to do). In addistion, we must also let them feel capable of making decisions based on what we have taught them. After teaching Little Tree, he expressed his good faith in Little Tree's understanding of The Way in giving him an opportunity to live The Way.
This type of teaching is especially important to us as health teachers. The quality of our teaching is not so much based on the grades our students get on tests, but on the number of sexually active or pregnant students in the school, or the percent of students who drink, smoke or use drugs, or their body image and nutrition. We must be able to not just effect a student's academic acheivement, but also their lifestyle. Granpa shows a good example of this by letting Little Tree make the choice himself.

I also would like to post entries on other books I'm reading this semester. One that I'm reading right now is called Red China Blues by Jan Wong. Expect to hear about that one until the end of the month when a report on it is due. But it doesn't end there; I had to buy over a dozen books for this semester and only a handful are pure textbooks, so I've got some good material for postings.

Watching for Credits

I'm taking some fairly interesting classes this semester, including Human Biology and Theories of Comparative Politics, but the first half of this semester (now coming to a close) I've spent an exceptional amount of time for one class in particular--Exploration of Teaching. For two weeks we met in class every day and talked about what we like about the idea of teaching as a career and things we would have to do as health teachers. We read from a really good textbook written by our professor and her husband and watched Cipher in the Snow (sooooooo depressing, yet somewhat necessary for people who are going to work with children). Then everyone in the class was assigned two schools in Utah valley to go to and observe the health teachers. For the past month I've been to American Fork High School and Springville Junior High School watching a couple of teachers from different sides of the spectrum teach health and love doing it. It may seem silly to have a class where all you do is watch someone teach, but I learned more about teaching in these five weeks than I did in my Sociology of Education and Foundations of Education classes combined...okay, I don't know if that's exactly true, because I absolutely LOVED going to those two classes and doing my work for them, but I have learned more about teaching in the classroom watching someone teach than reading about the sociology of education or discussing the foundations of education.
American Fork High School is a very impressive high school. They have lots of technological resources and lots of money and a new looking school. The health teacher, Anne Johnson, has been there for 42 years. The students like her class and respect her. She showed me a file cabinet filled with folders of stuff she's used over the past 40 years to teach health, all organized in folders for every lesson of the year. And the first pages in every folder are prints of power point presentations she has made and presents for each lesson. As much as I got tired of the blonde jokes she told at the start of every class, she does a good job with those kids, and I hope that I can still love to teach just for the interaction with the students like she does when I'm her age.
Springville Junior High is an old building with an old intercom system and probably some asbestos. Teachers still had access to technology, though, and all classes are electronically connected so teachers can actually help students study what they need to during their advocacy period. Ryan Chambers played outfield and pitcher for BYU and did some time in the minors pitching in the Cubs' organization in 2005 before coming back to Utah to teach health. He's in the process of getting a masters in sports conditioning and performance online from SUU. It's his first year in junior high after three at Payson High School, and he loves how much more excited the kids are to learn at this age. He has the kids work on activities making brochures and pamphelets to internalize the information. His favorite part as well is the interaction with the students.
Both Ryan and Anne are excited to be teaching. Anne after 42 years and Ryan after spending a summer with Single-A Boise, and being lights out in rookie league. I hope that I will have no regrets when I start teaching; that I can be as excited as Ryan and Anne about what I'm doing. I wish that I could watch all of the health teachers in the Utah valley and see what I like and dislike about each of them so I can shape my teaching style even better. A year from now I'll be in the classroom, by myself, everyday, teaching health to young people; I feel too far away from being adequate to teach to be this close to needing to be ready, but I guess I don't have any say in when the time comes, only in my level of preparedness.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Bob Dylan was right. Things aren't the same anymore. I'm in Linden, California, packing cherries once again. Last year I said I wasn't coming back here. I told everybody that I was getting married, going to school for a year straight, and graduating August 2009. Plans have changed. I'm married, I'm not going to school, I'm not graduating until 2011. And I'm back here with my good friends at Prima Frutta Packing. The joke around here is that you can't stay away from this place, and apparently I fit the part. I'm coming back, though to a different job. This year I brought my old roomate Andrew for a job, and we're woking together on dialing in the consumer pack machines. After two years in the pit, I miss it. I miss the rush, the interaction with the workers, the interaction with cherries. The work we're doing is all just machine testing, optimizing the system. It's not bad, it's just a change.

I'm away from Courtney for an extended period of time the first time in our marriage. At least I know she's with friends, as she knows of me as well. In eighteen days Andrew and I will return to Provo to our wives late at night and go to bed and sleep for a day straight. I can't wait for that day, and we've only worked 52 hours this week--half of what we'll do next week. We haven't even started out here. I miss Courtney more than I miss all those things about a job working the pit. For a number of reasons, I won't be back next year. Now I know what you're thinking, it's early, and yes, I've said that at least once before, probably twice, but I really can't go. I'd rather not go this long again separated from Courtney, and if I'm really plan on graduating in 2011, which is late enough as it is, I have to go to school next summer.

We ran out of early last night so I went over to see the Rendulic family. My friend Dora with whom I graduated high school back in 2003 is in her second year of med school. In two years she'll be a doctor and I'll be a teacher. More change. My friend Chris King is graduating this Saturday. The joke there is that if we would have placed a 50 cent bet in 2003 that Chris King (pictured here third from the left with his roomies at Chico State) would graduate from college before me, Atlee, and Matt people would have told us to buy a Whatyamacallit instead, but alas, we would actually be millionaires today. I gained a new career track, Atlee gained a religion, and, heck, I think Matt might finish next year. Change isn't always bad, it's good. I'll be much happier working in education than in the West Wing. Atlee's plenty happy on his mission and Chris and Matt are happier now than they would have been had they pursued the path they were on after one year at Delta College. I'm happy with where we're all at today. I'm happily married, happily pursuing a career I feel passionate about, and happily writing blogs about Star Trek, concerts, things in the news, and things I learn about in my classes. Even if it's not what I imagined I'd be doing five years ago. There's a battle outside and it is ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a-changin'.

Who Gets the Credit, and Why Do We Care?

That’s the big question that all of Goethe’s writings led me to ask. I’ll start with some words from the ungrateful Prometheus as he cried to the heavens. “Was I not forged into a man, by all-powerful time/And eternal fate, my masters and yours?” He argues the same to Zeus that many atheists of our day argue to believers. God didn’t make me who I am today, he didn’t help me at all. I got here because of me. I am a product of my experience over time. The fate of the year molded this great edifice of a mortal. Things teachers teach will be forgotten. At one point or another we will believe we have taught ourselves things that were shown to us in classrooms by underpaid teachers in underfinanced schools. No one wants to remember those days, and so the teachers and the skills they taught become part of their own developing mind that evolved into its end product with no help from any outside source.
Goethe’s Faust also leads us into some interesting questions concerning the value of teaching. Here’s a man who is widely acclaimed as a learned professor, and yet he turns to the devil for some help. He’s done so much, but doesn’t seem like he’s done too much. Possibly because he hasn’t gone anywhere. My family lived in Linden, California for sixteen years. My father taught in the same portable classroom at Waterloo Middle School from 1991 to 2005, when he went to the high school. Having seen the before and after, the classroom looked exactly the same. The same posters of Michael Jordon, Mike Gallego and Mike Bordick and Dennis Eckersley that he posted when he got there were on the walls when he left. Some teachers don’t see more than one city, school, or classroom their entire careers. Yet young people come in and go out their doors every year, and all teachers can hope for is that they made a difference. On occasion they see an end product, but often they don’t. Without ever knowing what you’ve done to help, depression can verily easily creep up on you. The devil can drop in, and as Faust said, “The worst company will let you find that you’re a man among mankind.” In other words, the Faust had a pity party with the devil, and the phrase “I’m just a teacher and I don’t make a difference” throbbed in Faust’s head enough for him to throw in the towel.
When teachers feel like stepping down from their pulpit in self-pity and depression students don’t remember an effective, motivating, invigorating teacher who helped them become a better person, they remember a talking head who held up hoops through which students jumped and found loopholes to get around. Some of these students are not ruined by a sub-par education, however. They become professionals in law, business, health and the bureaucracy, and live very successful lifestyles. When they get there, they don’t remember an accomplished, wise teacher, they remember someone who’s still in the same portable classroom that they taught in fifteen years ago. To me, this is the saddest thing, and one that has affected me in my own life. People around me are going into careers in law, engineering, landscaping, business and forest rangering, and I’m going to be a teacher. I have always had a desire to teach, even though I danced around it forever before finally settling down right where I always wanted to be. These friends of mine will have grander “success”, perhaps, in the world, and live in nicer houses and drive more expensive cars and go on extravagant vacations, and I’ll love being a teacher, living somewhere around the poverty line and babysitting the teenagers of the entitlement generation and dealing with their whacked parents in a crackpot education system. That could get depressing at some point, so why do I want to do it?
People in other professions look for jobs where coworkers are competent and hardworking, the working environment is comfortable, and the company is profitable and well organized. Teaching won’t always be like that, and that’s something you realize when you decide that teaching is what you want to do. For a while I would tell people that I planned on going to grad school and studying education policy, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want those jobs. I love statistical research and analysis, but I don’t really want to be that distanced from the front lines. I want to teach and at some point go into administration, really find ways that work and put them to use. I guess the paycheck never worked as my motivation, but a worthwhile challenge that I believe in is worth working on--even if the payout isn’t that great.
In conclusion I refer back to the words of Prometheus. “Here I sit, shaping man, after my image…To rejoice and be glad, and like myself/To have no regard for you!” Goethe hit it right on the spot. Faust and Prometheus worked for the wrong reasons. Maybe Faust should have gone into a more lucrative profession if he was going to dismiss God as the fount of all knowledge and give himself all the credit. If we don’t give credit where it’s due, we’ll be very surprised that day when we think we deserve it and we don’t get any either.