Ten Minutes to Excellence

I think it was Harry Wong in The First Days of School who said that teachers are the only professionals who are expected to start out perfect and get better.

How do we do it? How do we become better craftsmen? I know I don't have much time to think let alone "get better at what I do." So this is my current solution. I try to spend the first 10 minutes of work reading something related to teaching.

This school year I've managed in those 10 minute sessions to read a whole textbook on how to teach literature as well as a couple chapters on creative thinking. It isn't much. But the ideas have helped. Also, I think those 10 minutes work to keep whetting my appetite for better teaching.

I think this post could have been labeled a little more humbly. Maybe it should be "10 minutes toward getting just a little better." But somedays that's all we can do. If I can get just a little better at what I do, someday I'll be the teacher I dream to be.

Peculiar Things

Peculiar things happen to me all the time. Friday night I was having pleasant conversation with a friend when I momentarily got trapped in the chair I was sitting in. At first there was nothing unusual about this conversation. But then I leaned forward a little and discovered that my elbow couldn't follow me. (My elbow had gotten lodged between the wooden slats in the chair.) My friend kept talking. And while I calmly nodded I tried to tug my elbow free. But it wouldn't budge. She kept talking; I kept tugging. And we went on like this for awhile before I finally broke down and said, "My elbow is stuck in the chair!"

I tried to remain calm as we pondered ways to solve this "situation." Finally, she rubbed my elbow down with olive oil and we extracted it from the chair. My elbow still hurts from that extraction.

The moral of the story: Beware of chairs. They bite.

Teaching

Recently, I woke one night and feeling as if someone had knocked the wind out of me. I sat up in bed, looked at the shadows on my wall, and I asked myself this question, "Can I ever do it? Can I ever pull off teaching the way I was taught? "

College for me was exciting. I was fortunate enough to attend classes that (at times) gave me goose bumps. I remember lying awake in bed thinking about all the things that I had learned during the day. My mind was simply swimming in ideas. I would roll the ideas over and over in my head. Some ideas would catch me for days or even weeks. (I think I thought about postmodernism and its implications for years.)

I often feel so helpless against what was given me. Can I ever be the kind of teacher that my teachers were? Will I have what it takes to create metanonia (a change of mind), a conversion to ideas?

As a teacher, I am an evangelist for mind. I am a PR officer for thought.
I can give my students knowledge, but can I give them wonder?