Daily Prompt Response—Great Teachers

I can’t possibly skip over this prompt and not answer it. I was a teacher for 18 years. I taught 3rd graders—those kids who are just starting to become independent and still love their teacher. I also taught 5th graders—kids who start the year off super sweet and then grow into their pre-teen hormone-induced attitudes by the end of the year. Before becoming a principal, I concluded my teaching experience as a middle school teacher. At my small, Catholic school, I taught English to 6th through 8th graders at the same time. Not in the same class, for sure, but each day I saw students in all three of those grades for my class at least once. I also taught science and social studies during various years. And what I learned after teaching those variety of ages of kids, and after going from a newbie, fresh out of college teacher to a veteran teacher who mentored beginning teachers, is that you can have all the knowledge in the world and be the absolute most qualified person to teach, but if you can’t connect with your students and build a rapport with them, you’re going to have a tough year. Or in my case as a middle school teacher, a tough three years, since I was their English teacher for all of their middle school experience.

A great teacher is hard on the kids in an appropriate way. After all, you can’t have a classroom that is out of control and expect learning to take place. The kids have to respect you. But to get that respect, you have to respect them in return. As I said my final goodbyes to teachers I have worked with over the years at my school, one of them told me that she wished I would go back to teaching because I have an incredible way with the middle school students. I can’t remember how she worded it, but she indicated that I got along with those kids in a way that was truly special. And I believed her. Not to toot my own horn, but I know those kids will remember me somehow in a positive way because aside from notes and letters that I have gotten from them after they leave my school to serve as proof, I know that there was a connection between them and me. That connection was evident in the simple fact that they talked to me. Sometimes they just came up to my desk after they finished an assignment, and while the other kids kept working, we chatted about a movie they saw last weekend or a game they just bought and have been playing at home with their dad. Or they ask me questions about one of my cats because I got a new kitten one year that became my class mascot from all the stories I told about this crazy kitten. It’s also evident in the paper grocery bag I have at home that is filled to the brim with little paper cranes that they left me. One year I found a paper crane on a kid’s desk and put it on the board at the front of the room. After that, I kept finding paper cranes in random places around my classroom. It didn’t stop for 3 or 4 years until I had amassed a collection of these things that was well into the hundreds. It’s also as simple as a kid having a bad day and them not wanting to talk but then ending up telling me everything because I said, “Come on, you can talk to me. What’s up?” Or when a kid seeks me out specifically because something happened and I’m the first one they think of to come to for help.

I have story after story of students that I remember and conversations we’ve had and things I’ve done for them and things they’ve done for me. I, honestly, consider myself a great teacher when I was teaching. I’m humble enough around others if they say something, but I know I was great, and I say that because all I did was care about the kids. And they knew I cared. It didn’t cost me anything to show them that either. It was simply that I listened to them and believed them, perhaps when others wouldn’t. I took an interest in what interested them. To be fair, they hated my class. One group of kids put it the best when they told me on several occasions, “We love you, but we hate your class”. I didn’t take offense because I know why they hated my class. I made them do grammar lessons and I made them write essays and I made them read long novels. And each class would graduate and go on to high school and many of them would come back and thank me because they felt that they were ahead of everybody else when they got to high school. They knew how to write well and they knew those grammar concepts I had tortured them with. So I know learning was taking place during the time that I was also building relationships with them. And I knew they didn’t like having to learn it at the time, the moaning and groaning alone when I told them to get out their grammar books was evidence enough. But that’s what makes teachers great. That’s what made me feel good about how I was teaching. The kids were learning and at the same time we were having a good time because we’d take a few minutes for me to tell the latest story about my crazy cat. And I’d listen to them about something fun they did over the weekend. It was simply a matter of me taking the time to connect with them in a genuine way.

It’s almost poetic or ironic or something that this prompt came up today of all days. Today is the last day of my contract with the Catholic school I have worked at for the past 19 years. I was a teacher for 18 and a principal for 1. But tonight at midnight, when it is July 1st, my contract will officially be over and I will be unemployed for the first time in those 19 years. There are a lot of complicated reasons that I have quit, and a lot of people are surprised that I’m not going back to teaching. They can understand that being a principal is the epitome of a stressful job in education, but they find it hard to believe that I’m leaving education altogether. I explain it like this, when I was a teacher, I gave that job everything I had. Being a great teacher requires that effort. And I invested so much of myself into those kids over the years. I don’t have children of my own so they became my children during the school day. I put so much into it…not just interacting with them but everything involved with teaching, the lesson plans, the grading papers, and all the extra duties I did to support the mission of the school. After all of that, I just don’t have anything left to give. I’m burned out. Everybody thought I was joking when I said I would be happy taking a job where I’m at a desk answering phones all day. I can’t say I’ll never teach again. I renewed my teaching license just before becoming a principal. It’s good for 5 years and not hard to renew if I change my mind after it expires. But for now, I’m content in my decision to leave the teaching profession behind me. I did all I could to be a great teacher and I hope my students agree that I succeeded in that effort.