Teacher

In the late 1990s, I was in a rut, professionally.  I had been a tax accountant at Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc. (see my blog post of March 20, 2016 - JES) for about thirty years and I felt like I was just spinning my wheels.  I was getting more and more depressed (not clinically) about my daily routine of going to my office in the morning and looking forward to, not dealing with my daily work-related tasks, but with leaving the office at the end of the day, as early as possible.  What was the point?  A paycheck, of course, but there had to be more to life than a paycheck.

I started thinking about an alternative occupation that would inspire me to become passionate about what I did for a living.  I thought about the Robin Williams 1989 movie, Dead Poets Society, the story of a young teacher (Williams) in 1959 at a private boarding school in a rural part of Delaware full of bright students, eager to learn.  Williams inspires them with his unorthodox teaching methods plus his enthusiasm.  He has them stand on their desks to see the world from a new perspective.  He encourages them to “make your lives extraordinary,” using the latin phrase “carpe diem,” or "seize the day."

This gave me the idea of pursuing a teaching career at fifty plus years-of-age, a little unusual.  Williams had convinced me that teaching was a noble calling.  I started taking night classes at Queens College to earn enough credits to qualify for a teaching certificate from the State of New York.  I vividly remember two of my courses. 

The first course dealt with educational psychology.  It was divided between classroom lectures/discussions and a fourteen chapter textbook.  One topic we discussed was grading, for which there are different theories (such as grading on a curve or based on stringent rules).  The professor announced that our course grade would be based solely on two multiple-choice exams (50% each).  The first would be a mid-term based solely on the first seven chapters of the textbook, and the second, a final, would be based solely on the last seven chapters of the textbook.  To him, classroom attendance and discussions were not relevant to the final grade, even though the subjects we discussed in the classroom were completely different from those in the textbook.  The grade in this course as given by the teacher was, in my opinion, completely irrational.  The three months of material we discussed in his class was “irrelevant?”  The relevant grade was based solely on material in a book he never discussed.  This was a very strange approach to grading.

The second course was what is referred to as “practice teaching.”  I was assigned to an America history teacher in an Astoria, Queens high school.  Under his supervision, I would teach one of his classes during the week.  Unfortunately, I quickly caught on that he didn’t really want to handle this assignment.  I was forced upon him by my Queens College advisor and his high school principal.  My mentor basically ignored me, let me do whatever I wanted, without any comment, with one exception.  I was thinking of showing my class a scene from the classic western, High Noon (see my blog post of March 22, 2015), when ex-Marshal Will Kane goes into a church to ask the congregants for their help in dealing with a dangerous situation.  I wanted to use this scene as a way of discussing civic responsibility.  My teacher’s response was, “We are here to teach, not to show movies.”

I was also to observe my teacher during his classes.  He was an example of why so many don’t like to study history.  His methods were boring and delivered without any enthusiasm.  He never updated his lesson plans nor tried to do anything unorthodox.  This was at the advent of the personal computer.  However, he admitted to all with pride in his voice that, “I don’t even know how to turn on a computer.” What a role model!

In September of 2000, sixteen years ago, I finally got my chance to be a teacher.  I got a job teaching World History to sixteen and seventeen year-olds at an alternative high school in Brooklyn.  All these students had been “removed” in one way or another from their neighborhood schools.  I was not in Dead Poets Society, but instead was in the 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle, which starred Glenn Ford, Sidney Portier, and Vic Morrow.                           

In the latter film, Ford is a new, enthusiastic teacher assigned to an inner-city high school full of students, like Portier and Morrow, from poor backgrounds, some of whom are juvenile delinquents.  I remember Ford using an unorthodox method to try to stimulate his students, showing them a cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk.  In the climactic scene, Morrow pulls a switch-blade knife on Ford in their classroom.

Like Ford and Williams, I tried to be innovative and create an interesting, stimulating atmosphere for my students.  I decorated my classroom with covers from very old issues of Sports Illustrated that I had saved.  I put up two identical maps of the world, one the traditional way, and the second one, “upside down.”  Like Robin Williams, I wanted to show my students that they needed to see the world from a new perspective.

Unfortunately, I discovered that most of my students had turned themselves off to what I would call “formal education.” They were bright, but thought that I had nothing to teach them.  What was important to them they could learn on the streets (even though many were functionally illiterate).  The only reason my students showed up, at least occasionally, was that the law in New York State required their attendance until age eighteen.  I found it fascinating that I was the most poorly dressed person in the classroom, even though I was the most affluent.  I was basically ignored, ridiculed, and threatened by my students.  I wanted out.  I quit after one month.  On my last day, the mother of one of my students asked what she could do to help her son who showed up at school irregularly.  I told her that she must convince him that what the school had to offer him was valuable.  A hard task for the turned-off.

However, here in Brazil, I am a teaching again and enjoying it immensely.  It is the best job of my life even though I receive the smallest salary of my life.  I give private conversational English classes, either in person or on Skype, to my eager Brazilian students who want to improve their English skills.  I enjoy teaching those who want to learn.  That is what a real teacher/student relationship should be.