Now, What I Want To Do as a Teacher

I spoke today with two incoming seniors about some topics that I felt hit the core of what it is I want to do as a teacher.

1. Teach like an economist, not like a teacher. Economists think about opportunity cost and would teach the lesson that makes best use of the given time, attention and other precious resources. But some teachers will teach a lesson just because they taught it before, or because its part of the curriculum, or because its on the test. I don't want to get trapped in the mindset of being a teacher like that.
2. Teach students the things they need to know to succeed anywhere and everywhere. Again, teaching to assessment criteria and curricula are essential. But how about teaching what they need to know to succeed in other classes too? How about prioritizing? Time management? Leadership? Critical thinking? Problem-solving? Aren't these the things we need to know to succeed throughout high school? And in college? In our careers? In any endeavor we undertake?
3. Know what each individual student wants to be, know, and do and then teach this to them. I know that I like math and that history teachers tend to like history. I also know that these subjects are meaningful to us because they not only pay the rent but also give our lives purpose. Does this apply to every teenager who walks into a classroom? Aren't there some students for whom sports, dancing, magic, painting, etc. give the purpose to their lives? Won't some of these same students also one day pay their rent from something related to their experiences as athletes, ballerinas, card sharks, and artists? Shouldn't we encourage "extracurriculars" as having meaning beyond an after-school activity? Isn't that last history assignment displacing some time that a student could have spent on developing their hobby into something greater and more meaningful? What comes first? What the student wants to know or what I want them to know?

Of course there is a balance to strike between what I want to do and what I have to do as a teacher. I'd never want a student to fail as a result of a selfish desire to teach them more of what I want them to know. Still, I'd rather try and fail at these goals for my teaching career than never consider their importance and limit myself to a narrower view. I couldn't work like that and I won't.

Why Do I Want to Be a Teacher?

Late last night I had an excellent conversation with a student who came at me with one of those questions that you usually provide a short tweet-like answer to: "So how did you decide to become a teacher?" Often I might answer this with a "Well, I never studied to become a teacher. I actually studied economics." Or a, "I just really enjoy it." If I were interviewing for a new teaching position, of course I would be asked the same question and provide an answer similar to the latter, "I really enjoy teaching and the challenge of working with interesting young people...".

Truthfully though I already know the answer here. I think I value certain qualities in my work, those being (in no particular order):

1. Creativity
2. Freedom
3. Challenge
4. Intrinsically Rewarding

On #1, as a kid I always pictured myself becoming a writer or film director even though I never devoted much time and practice to those pursuits. On #4, I remember in college having a moral dilemma with every career I considered (business/economics didn't seem to be helping the world enough, even medicine seemed like I would only be helping a few people and the good I did would depend on the good done by others).

With teaching however, I get to hit all of these core values right in the sweet spot:

• For #1 and #2, I have learned over the years how much creativity and freedom is involved in teaching and I think this would be very difficult to give up. Once you have a job that allow you to indulge your myths of being a lone wolf and visionary artist that it a tough addiction to break.
• For #3 and #4, obviously teaching teenagers to enjoy math, science, or any subject that isn't eating or chatting is a challenge is a great challenge, but where this job gets truly rewarding is when you get to learn who your students are, what they want to be and can help advise them on how to get there.

If I have students who share my values and get to find studies and work that connect them with those values then I'm excited at that possibility. But the greatest thing will be if they are able to realize their own persona values and discover a path to transforming those values into decisions that affect the rest of their lives.

How Can I Get My Young Reader to 10,000 Hours of Reading?

By now the advantages of practicing something for 10,000 hours are widely publicized. My summer vacation to visit my family has turned into an experiment to get my little sister to become a voracious reader. After she re-read a few favorite books she was ready for a real challenge: the Harry Potter series.

We picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from the local library. After a quick practice read-aloud and the five-finger test we dove into reading HP together. The motivation was there, but it was definitely a challenge. The beginning of the book is filled with strange vocabulary and some British-English that is quite confounding for a young fledgling reader (YFR). But I realized that the great thing about her having picked this book was that if she came to love it, she could just go and go and go ... . At a total of a whopping 4,167 pages, the series puts YFR well along the path to the magic 10,000 rule.

I used to disparage the HP series since I didn't see how the books were any better than the highly entertaining movies. I have learned and changed my mind. Reading the HP books is big. 4,167 pages of anything is a huge investment of time and attention in our impatient society. It deserves special recognition. It's way more of an accomplishment than the participation awards we give out for playing on a team and it ranks up there with earning a rank in the Boy Scouts. So I've created my own HP Reading Certificate and passed them out to the first 3 HP readers I saw. See it here:

If you have read the complete series and would like your own certificate to prove it, leave your email in the comments and I will try to pass one on soon.

Our Family Feud

When I was in second grade our school had a program called Reading Around the World. It worked like this: students had reading sheets where they kept track of the books they read every night, parents signed off, and when the student returned to school their reading totals were updated with a marker on a giant colorful cartoon map of the country/world in the longest hallway in the school. I ate this up. I was either first or second in my class for the Reading Around the World totals, mostly because I wanted to earn the cool prizes that came with it, especially the little rubber sneaker erasers that were so coveted by my classmates.

Ever since then, I have yet to see a system that created such a strong focus on reading, although there are some great programs out there being used by some of the charters schools I've worked in. Let's just say if I ran a school, this would be my number one academic priority. Forget the tests, gimme the books!

Photo: Rachel Beth Polan

So when I came home to see my family and I asked my sisters what books they were reading and got embarrassed stares, I decided to do something.

Our family is now keeping track of our reading and competing against one another using a GoogleSpreadsheet. Let's just say the results have been stunning so far.

Highlights:

• Of my 4 initial invites to edit the doc, 3 of them are already using it, including the 2 targets.
• We took an emergency trip to 2 local libraries yesterday to stock up the family with family (reading) feud ammo.
• I crept upstairs at 12:30am last night and found my youngest sister reading near the end of her first book already. This morning when I checked she'd already updated that she finished the book and was on to the next one.

This is definitely happening again for my students next September!

How Was I As a Student?

Most public schools in the NYC-area closed yesterday or this morning. The private schools have been on vacation since the beginning of the month. Summer break is here.

The start of next year seems so far away, that I'm going to shift gears for a while and work less on plans and schemes and do more reflections. I have gotten a good education out of this past year and learned and developed a lot.

The challenge is to take the next few weeks and look back on what I've learned and get meta-cognitive about it.

Lately I've been thinking about how difficult it is to get students to match my expectations for them. I often find myself daydreaming back to when I was a student and wondering about how it was that my teachers, parents and role models taught me the standards that I've internalized. I have seen videotape of my teaching before and received feedback on my work as a teacher, but I'll never be able to see what I was like as a student. That's what I'd really want. To be able to see how I was taught, and how my peers were taught, and how we responded.

Until I have this information, or a real close proxy for it, I will be missing a great opportunity to get much better in preparation for next year.