Super Teacher

All right, in movies you see these phenomenal teachers who love every one of their kids – even the ones who you just know will be spitting in your burger five years down the road. These super-teachers get their students to care about great literature and classical music. They teach them the value of hard work and high moral character. These teachers mold young minds into scholars in the sole pursuit of making the world a better place.

I’m not one of these teachers.

Don’t get me wrong; I try dang hard to be this kind of teacher. I try with all of my might to be patient when a kid is smacking gum in my face and then pretends that he doesn’t even know what gum is when you ask him to spit it out. But man, it’s tough to not snap in that situation.

So here’s the thing; some kids are easier to teach than others. Some kids want to be there, and others don’t. There are kids who will burry their nose in a book and get to work the minute I even think about giving instruction.

There are also kids who, even as 14-year-olds, need someone to hold their hand through even the simplest of stuff like sharpening their pencil.
I’ll say, “hey, Randy, why exactly are you chasing Jear around the room?”
“Nothing, teacher,” he’ll say, “I was just sharpening my pencil.”
Those kinds of kids are frustrating and getting to them is probably the mark of if you are a good teacher or just someone who puts on the collared shirt every morning.

Now there are some days when I am this funny, cool teacher who makes even Randy laugh and bend over his book with the business end of his pencil to get some stuff done. If I could be this guy every single day then I would never have a problem again in my life. I’d win the Teacher of the Universe award like every other week.

Sadly this cannot happen.

Number one, the guy it takes to get to some of these students needs to change it up every single day. One day the funny jokes might get Randy to work, another day it might be stern looks and consequences and still another day it could simply be a pat on the shoulder and a, “hey, I’m glad you made it to class today.” Some days I just don’t know what road to take. Not to mention, it gets really confusing if Randy needs one sort of teacher and Jear needs another.

Number two being a super-teacher is exhausting. There are days when I am tired – enough said.

Sometimes these tough-case kids will figure out ways to get out of my class. “Mr. Tim, I think I have pink-eye,” or “Mr. Tim, my mother told me to go home to clean,” or “Mr. Tim, I think I left my pencil in the other class.”
And sometimes, Lord help me, I just let them go even though their eyes are clear, their mother had no way of telling them to come home and their pencil is clearly behind their ear.

Then, when they leave the class, both of us think we got the better end of the deal.
I know, I know, it’s the wrong way to look at things. And maybe there is a future version of me who will be getting kids to write to their local senator about the environment instead of drawing phallic symbols on their neighbor’s notebooks. Right now though, super-teacher or not, there are just some days that Randy and me need a break from each other.

Hollywood, if you want to make a movie about my teaching, you might have to wait a couple years.