In Praise of Teachers

I know that it seems a bit odd for someone who is about to start homeschooling to write a post such as this.

But starting down my homeschooling path has led me to examine my own educational history.  I have done a great deal of thinking about public school, past and present, and teachers, past and present.  Maybe I am rare, but until about high school, I look back pretty fondly on my education (notice I said "education", and not "socialization."  That is a different story.  Does anyone look back on the Junior High emotional slaughterhouse without pain?)  But actual education-wise, I was pretty blessed.  I had parents, and quite a few teachers, who instilled a love of learning in me.

There were the popular teachers, of course.  You know, the "fun" ones.  They usually were big hits with the popular students and the jocks.  They didn't give homework on game night.  Actually, they didn't give much homework at all.  You spent most of the time talking about current events or Homecoming or letting some doofus entertain the class for an hour.  They might have been fun, and I might have laughed a lot in class, but I can't recall learning much of anything.  And that kind of sucked.

There were the stinker teachers.  Some were just plain burnt out.  Maybe they were good teachers, once upon a time.  But administration policies and lazy students had killed their zeal, long ago.  Some were there for other reasons (like coaching football) and got stuck teaching Biology.  They usually gave extra credit for knowing who was in the Final Four.  Some tried so hard, but their minds were just too cluttered and they were too disorganized to be effective teachers.  Some teachers were just walking disasters.  I had one teacher who was a former hippie.  She drank from a coffee thermos all day long.  Sam Vachon once took a slurp from it during one of her many wanderings away from the class.  Vodka.  She was busted years later for selling pot.  Needless to say, we only made it two chapters into our textbook that year. 

Every so often, there were the machiavellian teachers.  I wonder if they were actually out to destroy students.  I had one teacher who actually used the Stockholm Syndrome to make us believe she was a fabulous teacher.  She would treat the class really really badly for the first few weeks-- belittling and humiliating certain students, teaching in a way that confused and scared everyone-- then she would slowly start befriending them.  By the end of the year, all the students would rave about her.  Looking back, that was a horrendous way to teach students. 

But there were also the wonderful teachers...  the ones who cared, the ones who listened, the ones who stayed after school with you to help you figure out that stupid Geometry puzzle.  These teachers didn't give a rat's ass about which students were in the cool crowd.   They gave homework.  They pushed you.  They assigned you special projects if they noticed any passionate interests.  They dressed up in their old wedding dress to play Miss Havisham to make Great Expectations a bit more interesting (that was my 9th grade English teacher.)  My sixth grade teacher actually took all the girls in our class camping. What a saint.  They might not have been the "cool" teachers, but they had gravitational pull.  Students flock to teachers who care.  I had an art professor in college, Bristow... he was like that.  Students loved him, both the arty ones and the ones who were just trying to get their art credit out of the way.  I don't know that he was the best at actual "teaching" but man, did he care.  We all loved him.  It was hard to find an "alone" moment with him because there was always a line!

And then... there were the golden teachers.  You know the ones.  If you've never had one, I feel sorry for you.  They were so very very rare.  They were the teachers who had such a gift for teaching that they could have taught Remedial Cereal Box Label Exploration and made it come alive.   My 8th grade Algebra teacher, Mrs. Murphy, had that gift.  So did an old art history professor of mine.  My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Kreeger, taught me how to draw and changed my life.  These teachers don't really have to deal much with kids talking in class.  The kids were too busy engrossed in what they were learning. 

Looking back, I had way more wonderful, caring teachers than stinkers.  I am eternally grateful to them (said like a little Toy Story alien, "Weareeternallygrateful.")  But it also makes me sad, because I know that with the advent of No Child Left Behind, all the crazy stupid testing (in my opinion), the stress of the Common Core Standards and increasingly uninvolved parents, it is more and more difficult for creative, caring teachers to survive in the public school system with their love of teaching intact.

I think of the neat creative projects that my teachers used to do with me.  Sunprints, making homemade yogurt, learning Taiwanese songs, watching a python eat a rabbit for two hours (yes, that really happened.  Thank you, Mr. Granderson.) Then I hear about my daughter's school schedule and I know that there is no freakin' way she will ever get to do that stuff.  But she gets an hour of ipad time everyday.  (Eyeroll.) 

So I say thank you to some of those former teachers.  I appreciate you.  You gave me a love of learning, which I will hopefully be able to share with my own children.