Back to school
My college courses are starting up soon around here, so I thought I’d share some insights into why I teach. These thoughts came from my 2008 speech when I won the College of DuPage Adjunct Faculty of the Year Award.
We all touch the lives of those around us. And there are few greater rewards than enriching the lives of students who come to us for knowledge and guidance.
So for me, I guess it was the television show Room 222 that I saw as an impressionable youth. Or perhaps it was To Sir, with Love – the movie with Sydney Pointier when it would play after school on Channel 7 at least a few times a year. You know the story – bad students get inspired to be better people by a creative, dedicated teacher. I never wanted to be that teacher. But I sure wanted to inspire other people with my work – you know nothing fancy – just for another person to hear a few words of my wisdom and be inspired to turn their life around.
Wouldn’t it be just grand to be THAT person who set them down their road to their personal success? It’s not that you would be looking for credit, but just knowing that in some small way – however small – that you had a positive influence on another human being. That’s good. That’s really good.
That, for me, is what it’s all about. Now I doubt that any students will be singing “To Fisher, with love’ about me at the end of a term. Nor do I want or expect such recognition.
I just want to set a positive example and be a role model for them. For them to see in me, what they really need to see in themselves. To want to succeed – on their own level mind you, not copy or mirror another’s apparent journey – but to be willing to take their own journey. In their own way.
I’m very Zen that way. It’s the journey that matters, not the destination. My Dad would always pile us in the car, put the pedal down, and get to my Uncle’s cabin in Minnesota, bragging all the way about how good of time he was making. If we don’t stop for dinner, we can get there in 9 and a half hours instead of ten. Pass the bologna sandwiches …
I, of course being too young to drive, spent the long hours looking out the windows imagining the sights, sounds, smells, and experiences that zoomed by. Dad could we stop and see that? That looks like fun. Can’t we take a back road instead of I-90? The answer was always no. For him, the destination was the thing. Me, I suffered through the journeys and made the best of it … looking for the steepest hill that would be fun to soapbox derby down, imagining the fields and forests being explored for the first time by native Americans and European immigrants, wondering how many teenagers would find the perfect spot to take their love on a discovery of a more intimate nature (ok that last bit was during my teenage years). Nevertheless, I do like going places … and GETTING there … eventually.
There are two important points I want to share with you.
- 1) Passion. You have to have passion for the subject you teach. Your exuberance will be noticed by your students and some of it might just rub off on them. Now I teach audio and let’s face it, it isn’t the most glamorous pig in the poke. But I love it and I love to expose fresh minds to its possibilities. Passion helps students learn.
- And 2) remember the one thing that I remind myself of everyday I step into the classroom. And that thing is this: Do it for the students.
It’s all about the students. Period. No, make that exclamation point!
Challenge them.
Help them learn to learn.
Provide information.
Create opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills.
Give real-life advice. Be relevant.
Be a mentor. A coach. A leader.
The thing is, once you continue to make a positive impact on the lives of those who step into your classroom, you start to realize that the answer to what do you do is this: “I AM a teacher.”
I owe my success to so many people. Some were teachers who pushed me. Some were teachers I thought were the worst (and therefore vowed to NEVER be like them – so I guess I still owe those bad apples a thank you for they did show me a way. Sorta.).
I’ve had many mentors, most in absentia, and I have a loving, supportive wife — I hope everybody has such a wonderful soul mate in their life as I have been fortunate to have. And I have a son who makes me so proud I could just scream his name from the top of the Art Center building every day.
Thank you and have a great year teaching! I am certainly looking forward to meeting and working with my stduents this year.
How about you? Do you have a short story about a teacher who made an impact on your life? Share it in the comments.
