The hardest part of a race is when you’re in the middle of it. When I was teaching, the winter months weighed in heavy and found me trudging, just barely, through thickets and mud. The corner seemed to turn around spring break when being able to finish another school year became doable—a genuine, palpable entity.
For teachers, parents, kids, and the whole community, finishing this school year marks the end of an achievement and a feeling of moving forward. It’s not spring or summer but a pass to the next season, another level whether that level is kindergarten, seventh grade, or high school.
“Did you get bored with the same level of teaching, year after year?” a friend asked me the other day.
“Whaddaya mean?” I asked.
“I mean, I know the kids change, but when you are a teacher, you don’t change grades. They move up and on, but you don’t really…move.”
It was a fair question. I knew enough to know my friend’s question was climbing a different hill.
On the surface, it is true. Teachers don’t move up or down by levels as kids do. For them, there is no sense of graduation, no certificates of achievement, and for the most part, little recognition. Teachers are working hard to make sure the accolades are going to all their students that have grown and matured in some way, either academically, athletically, or even socially. That is part of the job of being a teacher. It’s all for the kids.
As I gave this more thought, however, a memory came back to me. I was out on the playground at the end of one school year talking to another teacher when a sick feeling came over me about my own past teaching year. I realized that in so many ways, I had let the kids down by my lazy teaching methods and my lack of enthusiasm. While during the year I had thought I was smart by taking short cuts in the classroom, I had undermined the very thing that was motivating me to teach. I wasn’t moving forward with my own learning, the learning that gave me a sharp edge, the learning that kept me one step ahead of the kids and engaged.
The kids were moving up, but I wasn’t, and that was the problem. It was a feeling I never wanted to have again.
Learning should always be exciting. If it’s not, something else is going on, but it’s not learning.
Do teachers move up? Not by grade levels, but by maturity they must move if they are good teachers. They might be singing, sliding, dancing, or wiggling, but there is movement going on if there’s really learning going on in their classroom. It’s the moving that matters.
I think I was one of the lucky ones to be teaching a subject that I loved which was art. But it is the same for all subjects. We teachers always learn from the students, and as they learn, the classroom changes and moves. There in the back and forth between student and teacher, learning starts to fill the air and the environment becomes electrically charged.
What makes teaching so full and fascinating is that every effort a kid makes is the first of its kind anywhere. Have you ever thought about it? Every new mark on the page, every new report or experiment a child makes is the first of its kind anywhere and contributes to the energy in the room, and in that sense, to the world. That kid is taking a step that is a first for them, always original and fascinating to behold. There is nothing more exciting for a teacher than to see the lightbulbs going off and ideas popping like French fries.
“May I be excused?” says a student raising his hand in the famous Far Side cartoon. “My brain is full.”
No, you may not be excused. Your brain is on a bullet train! Grab a hold of a good teacher, thank him or her for the school year, but hold on for dear life! If you’ve learned anything this year at all you’ll put on your seat belt and lean into your next learning curve!
And, oh the places you’ll go!