Christmas Break Day 7

While sorting some old photo albums and paperwork from when I was getting my teaching credential, I came across a couple of interesting pieces.

When going through the background check to become a school chaplain, I was asked for all of my diplomas. I couldn’t locate the high school diploma but told the officer interviewing me that it wouldn’t have been possible for me to go to college without one, and I did have a copy of my college degree. He appeared skeptical but moved on. Today I found the high school diploma, in a different cabinet than my other college certificates, grades, transcripts, etc. My eighth grade certificate was with it. So there, I do have official proof I graduated from high school.

I’m throwing a lot of stuff away from those years when I took classes to get my teacher credential. I don’t think I’m going to have to prove any of the work I did as it’s all in my transcripts, of which I will keep a copy, just in case. But, I did find a write-up I did for my student teaching semester at Edison High School, and it made me happy to know, that 30 years ago, I was trying to influence students. Here is an excerpt from the write-up:

These past three months have been fruitful. In each class I have at least one success story. One young man in the business math class has a language deficiency but has managed to get a B in the class. He still gets frustrated with the work, but he is taking apart the material as I have shown him to do, solving each part and moving on to the next. The computer literacy class can be like learning a foreign language for some. One young lady has also had the problem of getting two small children to school with her. (The school had a daycare center.) She came into the class two weeks late, felt frustrated and lost, but with extra help in class, and time spent after class, has brought her grade up to a a C and is close to a B. She was teamed with another student in the class who has helped her when she missed class due to sick babies. The keyboarding class has a student who was failing every class but keyboarding. No one could understand as the girl is bright and intelligent with no known problems. During the parent-teacher-counselor conference it came out that keyboarding was the only class that allowed her free expression–composing at the keyboard–and where she felt that the teacher really cared about what she learned. I was flabbergasted! All of her other teachers were long-time, experienced teachers. Here I was, just a student teacher, but, I had used some of the little tricks and strategies that I had so recently learned, and they worked!

The instructor wrote, Great!! on my paper. Oh, and I got an A for the class.

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.