It has been a somewhat quiet day, now slowly winding down, a cat curled up next to me, listening to Brahms on his birthday, sipping brandy, with Leaves on the Current resting under her wonderful quilt, with another cat or two nearby to cuddle her.
Sometimes when we do not focus on something with which we are wrestling, the piece find a way to come together without conscious effort on our part.
I have reread some things I have written in the past.
I have gotten a problem in my wife's car addressed.
She wanted a turkey club from our local diner, so I got it, and she ate half, even though right now she cannot taste it - the issues of chemo.
I walked in the rain.
And through this all my subconscious kept working, connecting things I did not realize were connected.
I do not know if I will ever again have the opportunity to be a classroom teacher.
But that is where I belong.
Leigh Anne: I know I should have asked this
a long time ago, Michael.
Do you even wanna play football?
I mean do you even like it?
Michael: I'm pretty good at it.
Leigh Anne: Yeah, you are.
In 1992 I was at a college reunion where I had a conversation with Bob S., and we swapped teaching stories, him from a career, me from 6 months as a teacher intern at a Quaker secondary school. Later, Leaves told me that when I told my teaching stories my eyes lit up, I became a different person. That conversation started me on the path to becoming a teacher.
I am pretty good at it.
Today I exchanged emails with a man with whom I worked in my brief time back in school over the winter before Leaves got sick. One of the things he wrote me was this:
Your presence in the building truly had an impact on the scholars you were able to reach. We are grateful to have been able to spend time with you.
And that leads me to the point of this posting, which I will continue below the orange curlicue.
I am a teacher.
I belong in a classroom.
There are other things I can do well. But that does not mean I should do them.
A man I greatly respect and admire, who would love to create a job for me to help him in a high position in government, wrote me when I retired
You will always be a teacher. You are not retiring from teaching -
just retiring from the school where you have taught.
While I was back in the classroom for those few months before Leaves was diagnosed with her cancer, she said I came alive again, in a way I had not been since leaving my previous teaching position.
I can reread things I have written, here and elsewhere, and see that at times I am a very good writer. I have some insight, some ability to explain, an even better ability to challenge.
But all of that comes from wrestling with the scary task of teaching.
It is late on a Tuesday night. On Thursday morning I will step into a classroom of 8th graders for 30 minutes to do a "demonstration" or "sample" lesson. I have ideas of what i want to do, and why. I have not put them on a lesson plan form, but I have outlined them with explanation and sent them on to the school. The teacher in whose classroom I believe I will be teaching wrote back saying
Thank you for sharing your ideas and lesson. I have been in your shoes before (last year) and I am certain that you will enjoy teaching the scholars here.
We are always excited to experience teachers as they implement lesson plans.
I can never tell you how a lesson will go. THat is because I am only one part of it. I must work WITH the students - they, too, help shape the lesson.
Tonight I mentioned something to my wife: one thing wrong with American education is that we seem to afraid of failure, so that we are unwilling to take risks.
Yet real learning comes from pushing the limits, and when we do that we enter into an unknown realm, the kind that on old maps might be indicated by a phrase such as "Here Be Dragons" to warn of the dangers of venturing outside the known.
I can plan, but like the military leader, if the situation requires it I must be prepared to abandon that plan, recognize the terrain and adapt accordingly.
Or as my favorite piece of teaching advice, heard so many years ago from Dr. Leroy Tompkins, an assistant superintendent in Prince Georges County, puts it:
If the horse you're riding has died, beating it will not make it go faster.
I have not yet heard back about the non-teaching opportunity that I have been exploring, but I now know that so long as there is any possibility of my being a classroom with some flexibility to use my skills and my instincts as a teacher, that is where I belong.
It is also the birthday of Tschaikowsky. Now I hear his music. Perhaps my greatest technical achievement on piano was to learn his 1st concerto, although I never performed it with orchestra.
I could have been a professional musician.
I probably could have made a living in politics.
I did make a living in computers.
But my name here is correct - teacherken
I am a teacher.
In October I flew to California for the celebration of the 100th birthday of my first cello teacher. She is even now still teaching.
I am not yet 67.
I am not yet done with teaching.
Now?
I suppose I will simply have to persuade some school some place that hiring me will be of benefit to their students.
Nothing else will do.
After all, as Dirty Harry does say in one movie, a man's got to know his limitations.
This is my limitation - I have to be a teacher
this is also my blessing - I can be a teacher.
Today was a quiet day.
With a walk in the rain.
Listening to music, starting with serious listening to Mahler, which both lifted me up and wrung me out. Then the birthday boys of Brahms and Tschaikowsky.
With accepting the warmth of the cat cuddles.
Being able to do something to please my beloved spouse at the lowest point of the continuing 3-week cycle of 2 weeks of chemo and 1 week off.
Without knowing what may come next.
I am a teacher.
I am teacherken.