Plan your work; work your plan–part 3 of the teacher story

My success as a teacher came from all that work I did before ever going into education. I had to be able to handle a multitude of projects and personalities on my previous jobs and that flowed into my teaching career. It was a matter of planning and assessing and readjusting, usually every day.

When my mother learned that I was returning to school to get my teaching credential, she was pleased and said I should have done that all along.

“No, sorry Mom, but I couldn’t have been a good teacher at 22.”

After dealing with hundreds of brokers and truck drivers every day, juggling the needs of the customers with the output of the plant, and making it all work, I knew I could do a good job in a classroom. Sure enough, with lots of planning, the classroom ran just about as efficiently as my previous workspace had done. It just changed every nine months.

Planning tools for all those years of teaching

I knew that I wanted to work in a tough school. I wanted to make a difference in kids’ lives so I picked a low-achieving high school in a poor part of town to do my student teaching. My supervisor was not pleased; he had asked me to take a position in the ultra conservative, ultra white school district across town. No, that was not where I was needed. Those kids would succeed with or without me.

He visited me twice during my student teaching and told me, after the second visit, he could not come back as the classes were too disruptive for him to be comfortable. Huh? They really weren’t. The students were well mannered and polite to me (I would see, later in my career, just how great these classes had been) but they did tend to act out with one another. They were noisy when entering or leaving the room, and I did break up a fight or two right outside my door.

I learned to monitor the classroom to make sure work was being accomplished and equipment treated properly. That method of classroom management continued for the next 21 years. My students were always on task, and if they weren’t, I knew it.

It took lots of planning to be successful

I had been successful in school and I wanted my students to be likewise. I had been successful on all of my jobs, doing my work well, and I wanted my students to do that when they went to work. I planned lessons that brought the real world into the classroom and I took students out into the world so they could see what work looked like. Always planning, always preparing, always assessing. It became my life.

Come back and the next time I’ll tell you how I ended up at the inner city school where I spent those 21 years. I will give you a hint: I never applied for the job.

A time to remember and to plan

I like simplicity.  If you look again at that patio photo in my previous post, you will note there is very little on my patio.  I have one wrought iron table and chair set, one barbecue grill, and two cat beds, one being a large chaise lounge covered in an old blanket.  The patio gets very dirty during the winter as it is open on two sides, the two sides where all the wind blows in leaves and yard trash.  I want very little out here that will need to be cleaned.  The cement floor can easily be washed off with a hose and sprayer.  The chairs and table take a little more work.  This morning I spent time on those.

I shared these photos last year, and the scene this year is very much the same:

The wrought iron chair frames

The cushions were recovered a few years back.  I think the original ones were pink so I that’s what I had the upholsterer use this time around:

Cleaning the chair cushions

Although this furniture originally belonged to Terry’s mother, I have had it for over 20 years.  I am planning to keep it and perhaps sell it.  The upholsterer told me these sets sell for about $2000.  For now, I am sitting here, at the table, sitting on one of the chairs, typing this post, enjoying a moment of complete calm.

The smell of jasmine wafts through the air.  It’s coming from some other yard as I don’t have any flowering plants in mine.  The soil is just not conducive to growing flowers.  I have two mock orange shrubs that bloom earlier in spring and make the yard smell wonderful if I can get out here to smell them at that time.  The past few years have been missed as the weather and my crazy life have kept me elsewhere.

It is quiet out here and my mind has had a chance to slow down.  I’m getting more of a sense of what I want to do for my next career.  I’m not too sure if there is such a job description, but I would like to take pictures and tell stories for non profit organizations.  I love to talk to people, to hear their “story,” I love to write, and the picture-taking thing has gotten to be more and more fun.  Oh, and I have that marketing degree.  So, now I need to figure out a way to package this idea to some non profits.

Tomorrow I return to the last hectic days of the end-of-the-school-year.  Final grades, graduation, checkout, and a few parties thrown in for good measure.  It will all be a whirlwind, and I won’t be sitting out here, on the patio, enjoying the jasmine-scented breeze, for a long time.  But, for now, it is pure pleasure.

The last dance

Our prom was last night, Starlight Fairytale, at the zoo.  I’ve forgotten the themes of most of the 17 proms I’ve attended, but not the venues.  The music has changed over the 18 years of dancing, but one thing holds true–kids love to dress up and go out.

Terry goes along and takes the candid photos like the one below, and I do whatever chore might be needed.  Last night it was check-in.  Unlike the prom I did in 1999, where we had 650 students attend, last night was easy with just 325 attendees.  Why the huge decrease?  A rule I fought hard for–you only get to attend the prom if you have a 2.0 gpa at the 3rd quarter grade period.  That is not so hard, but it sure whittles the numbers.

I would check in students, back in the day, who I knew had been drinking, were probably carrying a knife, and/or hadn’t been to school in months.  If I pointed any of these things out to the administration, they would shrug and say the kid bought the ticket, they could come to the dance.  At one winter formal, where Terry and I were only two of five adults in attendance, I told him, “we’re outta here, there’s going to be trouble and I don’t want to deal with it.”

Somewhere along the way I caused enough ruckus, and got enough people on my side, to get the rule changed.  Those who put on the dances now cry foul because they make so little money on the event.  Who ever said formals and proms had to be big money makers?  I remind people of the “old” days when it was like the wild, wild west.  Oh, yeah, that’s right.  The dances are so nice now.  The kids come and have such a good time and there is never any fear for one’s safety.

Last night was the last dance.  I won’t be there for next year’s prom, wherever it might be held or whatever the theme may be.  I’ll somewhat miss that, but I do have 17 prom’s worth of memory to keep me company.