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30 in 30: Day 30 -- Another Fancy Tickler
I recently read Frank McCourt's Teacher Man. In it, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Angela's Ashes recounts his years as a teacher in a vocational school, in night school and, finally, in Stuyvesant High School in New York City.
In an Amazon.com review, Shawn Carkonen summarized part of the book thusly:
"...for much of that time he considered himself a fraud. During these years he danced a delicate jig between engaging the students, satisfying often bewildered administrators and parents, and actually enjoying his job. He tried to present a consistent image of composure and self-confidence, yet he regularly felt insecure, inadequate, and unfocused."
When I read those sections I felt a type of kinship with an author that I don't remember ever experiencing before. McCourt was describing my fears of being found out to be a complete fraud by teachers/administrators/parents/students through his writing.
Further elaboration continues, should you be interested. Simply
Some background is in order:
A friend of a co-worker recommended that I apply to the our local county school district on the basis of my All-But-Thesis completed Masters degree where I had focused on Children and Television. I argued against this idea, not having any idea what my degree had to do with teaching, but finally, in desperation, gave in and sent in a blind resume and bland cover letter to the Head of Media Services. One somewhat amusing story (told elsewhere in these memoirs) later, I had a job as a Children's Librarian.
It should be well understood that the only practical work experience I had that qualified me for being a Children's Librarian was having worked in the Green Valley Elementary School library from third through sixth grade, ages when I was 8 - 11.
My first day as a Children's Librarian I was told that instead of being a Children's Librarian I was going to be something of a Teacher instead. This came as something of a surprise since Classroom Teaching had not been mentioned at all during my two-hour four-person tag-team interview. It was something dreamed up at the one school because they needed an extra "Specials" slot to go along with Drama, Music, Gym, Spanish, etc., make their schedules work.
As for teaching, the only experience that qualified me to get up in front of a classroom full of kids and attempt to teach was... well, the desperation of needing a full-time job with health benefits for my family -- and the willingness to give it a try, I suppose.
I was what the county described as a "Lateral Entry" teacher. That meant I hadn't a lick of formal degree-seeking coursework experience in Education Theory or Practical Teaching. However, the county was so hard-up for teachers they'd allow anyone in who passed a criminal background check and was willing to work for poverty wages. The county would assure that I would receive counseling from An Experienced Teacher in the schools I was assigned to as well as Special Classes put on by the county school system for all such
The only catch was no one really knew what I was supposed to be teaching. It was vaguely defined as "Media II" (with "Media I" being regular Go To The Library Time) and the Librarian in charge happily showed me a former storage room that had been populated with chairs, two blackboards on wheels -- My Classroom. Oh, and my first class would arrive in five minutes and then two other classes would show up back-to-back and then I would have a break.
Minutes later, the first class walked in and sat down. And stared at me.
I remember looking into the eyes of a fourth grade black girl in the front row. Her eyes weren't so much curious as they were demanding. There was an angry, defiant, "Here I Am Now, Entertain Me" aspect to them that shook me more than I think I had been shaken since standing on an NYC subway platform trying to decide if I was actually going to live in Spanish Harlem or not when I was 20.
Uh oh, I remember thinking. They're expecting me to Do Something.
I panicked, looked to the back of the classroom where shelves of old equipment sat collecting dust -- the type of equipment I had learned to set up and use in classrooms all over Green Valley Elementary School -- and lunged at them. For 40 minutes I talked, non-stop, about the equipment and what it was used for, how it was used and anything else I could think of to say about it.
Five minutes later they were replaced by a group of five and six year old Kindergartners who, I quickly realized, really weren't going to understand much of what I was going to say. But I wouldn't tell if they didn't, so I launched right into the same routine again. And again, another 45 minutes later.
That continued for a few weeks until someone said, "Is this all we're gonna do in this class?" and I had to find something else to Entertain them with.
At the other school I was a more Traditional Librarian, with my own set schedule of Return Books, Check Out Books, Read a Story classes. Since both schools were Magnet Elementary schools they also had Elective classes and I was expected to teach two or three such classes per semester. One day in my first year there I found an old box of rolled up vinyl chess and plastic chess men -- enough for 24 kids to each play. As with most of my tenure as a teacher, I scrambled to find a way to teach Chess, found something that worked for me and that I thought would work for the kids as well, and dove headfirst into the mire.
Reading was the easiest thing, though. Most kids (and people young at heart) love to be read to. I found some great picture books, books with great art and fun stories, and did voices, overacted the parts like the closet stage ham that I am, and had a great time making kids laugh and, on occasion, reading something more serious that made them think.
And, all the while, I feared that someone would call me out for the fake I knew I was.
Sure, I was doing some good stuff here and there. Most of the kids seemed to like me, even most of the teachers and the parents liked me. But other than those first year of once-per-month Lateral Entry county-required "Let Us Help You Teach" sessions (which never had anything that helped me in my situation in elementary school libraries) I never saw any other Lateral Entry person. I was always surrounded by people who had college degrees in Education and years and years of experience in the classroom.
There is a difference between being liked and feeling like I belonged. I never really felt like I was one of them. I was the long-haired outsider who, read a lot of Jon Scieszka's books to kids, railed on viciously against television and taught Chess and, so far, had faked it well enough to get the job and keep it... until one day when someone would come in the library and called me out for the fraud I was.
I managed to keep faking it for five and a half years before finally ducking out of the classroom before anyone could call me out.
I could probably walk into a classroom and fake my way though some parts of it today but a lot of things have changed in the classroom. Even if the pay were the same, I'm not so sure I'd be willing to go back. Part of me would love the chance to play around again, but I'm older, the kids are a bit more jaded and I suppose I lack the willingness (and/or the tolerance) to put up with Administrators who only know how to hinder and not help.
I still wonder, though, if any of my kids -- the kids I taught -- knew I had no idea what I was doing most of the time?
...