Category: education

I Love My Job!

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About four months ago I was hired to manage the Integrated Reading and Writing Learning Center (INRW LC) at Palo Alto College (PAC) in San Antonio, Texas.

“INRW” stands for “Integrated Reading and Writing.”  Our center is a place where students can come to participate in reading and writing workshops and get hands-on tutorial help with tasks that have been assigned by their INRW instructors who teach in the Department of English.

I absolutely love the job for a whole bunch of reasons.  For one, I get to supervise several extraordinarily talented tutors and oversee the daily operations of the INRW LC.  I also get to design and lead workshops as well as work with student-writers on a one-to-one basis.  They bring drafts of papers they’re composing, and I act as reader and consultant as they go through the writing process.  Our ultimate goal, as we work collaboratively, is to have them produce pieces of writing they’ll be satisfied with and that will receive positive evaluations once they’re turned in.

Before coming to PAC and the INRW LC, I was employed as a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo (AUC), a position I held for seven wonderful years.  What I like about my current job is that I still have the opportunity to teach but get to provide more personalized assistance, thus turning teaching and coaching into acts of great sharing and intimacy.

Students often ask me what it takes to become a really good writer.  There’s a lot that goes into answering such a question, but if I’m forced to boil it down, I’d say that the single most important thing a person might do to get better at writing is to focus on becoming a more skilled thinker.  I make this claim because writing is really just thinking on paper, in a visual form that can be shared with others.

In my case, I started getting much better as a writer when I became a graduate student and professors started pressing me intellectually.  By holding me to a really high thinking standard, I had to evolve as a communicator because words were the things I was using to share the ideas I was positing.  If I wanted my ideas to be compelling and precise, then my language had to be compelling and precise.

Graduate school is Boot Camp for would-be intellectuals, and my professors were working hard to turn me into a kind of Thinking Ninja.  I was being tested and stressed and worked out so that I could become formidable.  Because we live in a world where ideas matter, the strongest ideas, presented the most strongly, end up mattering more.  Those who hold them and become skilled at sharing them, become very powerful.

This is why I ask so much of all the students I work with.  I want to empower them.  I want to help them gird them for battle.

A Third-Rate President

 

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In Wadi Gedid, Egypt

I have a tendency to go on and on when I blog, but I want to be short and to the point on this one.  I am an American man who couldn’t be prouder to be married to an émigré from Egypt, an African country and one of those places the “President”—I don’t find him one bit presidential so I’m required to use quotation marks—recently besmirched by referring to them as “shitholes.”

I am proud because my wife is kind, honest, hardworking, creative, and generous, just to name a few of her positive attributes.  I find it ironic that a day after the “President” belittled those who’ve come here from other places, my wife completed the paperwork needed to start her own sole proprietorship, a home baker business she’s calling “ZooZoo’s Sweet Treats.”  She owned and operated such an enterprise in Egypt and did very well, mostly because she is an artist in the kitchen and a skilled entrepreneur.  I expect that she’ll be a smash here as well.

By the way, has the “President” seen this country in its entirety?  There are places in these United States that could use a little enrichment and beautification.

Why, one wonders, did Trump choose the term shitholes?  He could have referred to locales in Africa and such as “beautiful places,” but he didn’t.  He used such a descriptor because he thinks of large swaths of everywhere else as the “Third World” which equates to “third-rate.”  (Unfortunately, this whole “first-world-versus-third-world way of thinking is widely held in America.)  Those from the Third World are thought to be third-rate because they are poor and backward, which says a lot about what Americans put value on.  Such a way of looking at the world fails to take into account the fact that many in the Third World are actually first-rate when it comes to their spiritual development and the like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never Mind

I want to share this cute TED Talk with you.  Toward the end of the presentation, the bald presenter takes out a ukulele and plays it in a terribly funny way.  I don’t know if my saying that qualifies as a spoiler (and thus I need to officially provide you with a SPOILER ALERT), but if it does and I do need to, then I sincerely apologize for not having done so in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time.

My point is really to write about the ukulele because it reminds me of my own boyhood.  For some reason I have no ability to fathom at this time in my life, I wanted, when I was maybe nine years old, a ukulele so badly that I could taste it—even though I never would have actually taken a bite of its wood if offered to do so.  But that’s beside the point.  More to the point is this:  I asked my parents to get me one for Christmas.

Due to the nature of parenthood, most mothers and fathers will do all manner of silly things including going to a music shop and spending real money to buy a thing that looks like a guitar that was born prematurely, which is exactly what my mom and dad did.  I remember it came in a little case and included a pick that looked like it was made of felt.  The instrument held my interest for maybe three months which was long enough for me to realize two things.  First of all, I had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever, and two, playing a ukulele, even though the instrument had been popularized by Tiny Tim, one of the greatest weirdo performers of all time, was one of the most boring ways a person could spend five minutes or ten minutes or whatever time one happened to spend strumming its four strings.

Once this realization came to me, it went back into its case and resided there until it died the horrible death of suffocation.

OK, so none of my story has anything to do with the video, but that shouldn’t keep you from watching it.

 

 

 

And Nothing But the Truth

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I received an odd piece of mail during the recent holiday period.  The return address showed that the sender was a “CHIEF CENTRAL JURY BAILIFF,” not the sort of personage I regularly keep in touch with nor the type of individual I expect a Christmas card from.  The all caps were a touch intimidating.  I began to relax as soon as I read the words “JURY SUMMONS” printed on the exterior of the envelope.  Still, I wondered, what’s with all the shouting?

To make a long story short, I was being asked to do my civic duty and show up at the Bexar County Justice Center, an imposing building located right in the heart of the city of San Antonio, Texas, at 8 a.m. on January 8th.  The Honorable Catherine Torres-Stahl, presiding judge of the 175th District Court, was requesting my presence at the place and time indicated.  When I flipped the summons over, just to see if there were some loopholes that might allow a pretty accomplished shirker a way out of appearing, I was informed, in quite clear terms, that failure to comply would allow the authorities to fine me “not less than $100 nor more than $1,000.”  Pronouncements of this sort are generally pretty effective in turning most of us into model citizens.

So I arrived early in the morning at an hour when many folks were still working on filling their daily quota of yawns.  They told us to go to the basement, which I did, where I found hordes of people being lined up and herded into a large room that resembled a holding pen.  The people kept coming and coming until all the chairs were filled and then the overflow were asked to stand in the aisles.  At one point we were informed that the room held no fewer than six hundred human beings.  Because I was astounded by the number of folks assembled, I took out my mobile phone and inconspicuously took a photo of a fraction of the throng only to be told, minutes later, that no sort of photography, other than selfies, would be allowed.  Of course, the absolute worst place to do the forbidden is anyplace where there are people with guns who’ve been given the authority to use them.

Eventually, my name was called with sixty-seven others.  They sent us to the third floor this time.  We huffed and puffed our way up flights of stairs where we were met with a bailiff with a gun on his hip.  Each one of us was assigned a number—mine was forty-eight.  He then lined us up in order and said, “Whenever we go into the courtroom—it could be five minutes or it could be much longer than that because, you know, there are lawyers involved.  Anyway, once we are called, we will enter in exactly the same order we are in now.  If you go in out of order, it means I haven’t done my job well.  I don’t like it when people think that I’m not good at what I do.  I know I sound mean, but I’m a man who has been married for twenty-five years.  That’s long enough to give any fellow a mean streak a mile or so wide.”  (Several people laughed at that, and it was clear he knew how to work an audience.)  Once the laughter had died down, he ran his fingers through his hair and said, “True story.  When I was a young man and just newly married, I was a sweetheart, but my wife, well, she’s something else and she has had her influence.  I won’t say she scares me, but do you see this gun, I sleep with it under my pillow at night.”  Again, there was some laughter but a little less this time.  Once it was over, he said, “Folks, I’m just kidding.  I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.”

The bailiff then disappeared and I began to wonder if he might moonlight at one of the standup comedy shops in the city.  I didn’t have long to ponder that possibility because we were soon called into the courtroom.  As luck would have it, I got a front-row seat, which allowed me to have an up-close-and-personal view of everything, including the judge at the rear of the room, the district attorneys (two youngish women dressed smartly in suits) and the defendant and her lawyer, a bald African-America who wore a wry smile through most of the proceedings, especially when he stood up and began to address the potential jurors.

The vast majority of my experience that day was humorous, in a sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek sort of way, except for when the judge read out the charges against the defendant:  Several counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.  While the judge was saying all this, I watched the accused carefully.  She immediately turned her face away from us and toward the floor.  Tears began to well in her eyes and then flow down her cheeks.  At one point, I noticed she began to shake uncontrollably.  Possibly she found the courtroom to be a cold place, but I don’t think her shivering had anything to do with the temperature in the room.

It finally came time for the lawyers to ask us questions.  I was especially interested in the defense attorney.  While speaking, he paced some and was often standing no more than four or five feet away from me.  An interesting line of thought occurred as I watched him.  We Americans have a very romanticized view of lawyers and courtrooms.  This idea comes from Hollywood, but real lawyering—the kind I saw happening in front of me—looked a lot more mundane, like teaching, which I happen to do but for much smaller paychecks.  I could see that the attorney was running through his well-rehearsed list of queries and that he was sort of on autopilot.  There was no drama, nothing riveting.  Then, once those legal eagles had questioned most of us, we were made to go sit in the hallway where, once again, our bailiff tried out some of his best comedic lines.

My day ended not with a bang but with a whimper.  I was told that I wasn’t going to be seated as a juror.  In a way, this sort of bummed me out because I wanted to see how it would all end up.  I wanted to see if the defendant—a perfectly ordinarily looking individual who could have been a friend or relative—would walk free or spend a large portion of the rest of her life doing something a lot more confining.

 

LOOK

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I wrote this a little more than a year ago, but it seems, once again, very apropos…

***

I can’t believe I’m being dragged back into politics.  But that is exactly what’s happening.

In 2015 I quit visiting all the political websites that had held my interest for many years.  I stopped thinking about politics and discussing the topic with others.

2015 is also the year I left Egypt after living and working there for seven years.  During that time, I was very political, at least from 2008 to 2014.  In 2011, I witnessed the mass uprising against Hosni Mubarak and found myself swept away by the euphoria that followed his deposing.  Then, two years later, during the month of July, I watched in horror as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown in a military coup.  Some very scary characters referred to it as a “second revolution,” but the more apt term was “counterrevolution.”

The counterrevolution crushed my spirit but not because I was a Morsi fan.  I was devastated because I had seen how hard brave Egyptians had fought to free themselves.  And I saw the sacrifices they’d made.  Suddenly, though, they were right back at square one or even worse.  The only way I could survive such devastation was to numb myself.  So, I withdrew from politics and became apathetic, which takes me back to the point I was making about myself in the second paragraph.

I had a bit of a revival when Bernie Sanders decided to run for president.  The old political juices began to flow again.  From the moment he declared his candidacy, I felt the Bern.  Eventually, he built an incredible following and I began to see a glass that was half full.  Egypt had certainly lost its way but America, it seemed, was on the verge of finding its soul.

Then the Democratic Party machine decided that Hillary Clinton was somehow owed the nomination.  Bernie was treated unfairly and his supporters were pushed aside.  Many of us warned that Clinton was too compromised and therefore vulnerable.  Too few listened to those warnings.  Too many people were too certain about what they thought was a foregone conclusion.  There were many ominous signs for those with the ability to see and read them.  With Bernie out of the race and everyone saying Clinton was a shoo-in, I began to lose interest again.

But I never drifted entirely away.  That weird sense of foreboding I felt wouldn’t let me turn completely off.  The mood of the nation reinforced the sense of dread I felt.  It seemed all too possible that something catastrophic might happen.  And it did on November 8, 2016, a date that go down in infamy.

Now that the world as we’ve known it is in the process of vanishing, the old jump-up-on-a-soapbox Troy has reawakened.

I grew up during a period when Americans smugly believed that the nation and its people were somehow special—or exceptional.  They watched as other countries fell apart or came under the influence of evil powers but felt that such things could never happen in the greatest country the world had ever seen.  America would always remain the beacon.  It would always set the model for others to follow.

But just look where we find ourselves now.  Just look.  Look long and hard.  And while doing so, make sure not to turn your eyes away.  Don’t delude yourself into believing that what you see isn’t as bad as many are suggesting.

The truth is, it’s every bit as bad as people are saying.  We cannot know for sure how bad it may get, but it is already way beyond horrific.

 

#NotMyPresident #TheResistance

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I have this friend named B*** S******.  We got to know each other while we were both teaching at The American University in Cairo.  I returned to the US in 2015 and he did so a year later.

When I came back, I got a pretty lucrative education and training job with the Department of Defense as a private contractor.  I was hired to work with foreign military personal—both enlisted and officers.  I had students from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Djibouti, Jordan, Mauritania, Togo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Georgia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Mongolia, South Korea, and Indonesia.  I might have left out a country or two, and I apologize if that’s the case.  Then, student enrollment declined, beginning in the springtime, and I got laid off exactly one year after hiring on, making me collateral damage which sounds a lot better than a bullet-riddled corpse that had been mutilated beyond all recognition.  It was the first layoff of my life and it came at the worst time imaginable.  In fact, it’s left me with ugly scars and something akin to PTSD.

B*** came back and got a job at a community college in some Podunk in the Midwest, an area sometimes called “flyover country,” and for good reason, because to land there puts one at risk of contracting a deadly form of ignorance, the sort that turns the brain to mush, making someone like Donald Trump look like a reasonable human being who might make a good president.

I might be giving my friend’s current place of abode away by saying it garnered national news a while back when the police arrested three scraggly, lily-white, neo-Nazi-looking guys who were in the midst of plotting to blow up a building inhabited by Somali refugees who had committed the heinous crime of leaving their troubled homeland to start life anew.  I’ll go back and look at the reports again, but I believe one Donald Trump, the fellow who froths at the mouth like a rabid skunk when you suggest he’s opened up Pandora’s Box of hate in the country, had been the rednecks’ primary inspiration.

To quote one of my favorite writers of the 20th century, a kinky headed dude named Kurt Vonnegut:  “And so it goes.”

B*** and I talk about politics on the phone from time to time.  During one of our pre-election conversations, I said, “There might be a silver lining to the election of DT if it happens.”

“What the hell would that be?” B*** asked incredulously.

“Well, in the short run, I agree it would be catastrophic, but in the longer term, it would likely be a powerful impetus to kick start a truly robust progressive movement the likes of which American has maybe never seen before.”

Do I see such a coming together of progressives happening now that we are living in the alternative universe known as Trump Reality?  Quick answer:  Hell yes.

The last time we talked—about two weeks after that very flawed presidential election—B*** was terrified.  (I could hear him quaking in his boots through the phone.)  His fear was that we were entering a phase where the fascist brutes, aligned with law enforcement, would just start rounding people up or mowing them down—whatever was most cost-effective and convenient.  I advised my buddy to get on Twitter and just have a look around at the pushback that was taking place against the Chief Nihilist of the US and his fascist minions.  If he did so, I exhorted him, he’d feel a lot better.

I have always felt that STEP ONE in the resistance of despotism can only come after millions of people have linked arms—this linking can start virtually, on places like Twitter—become comrades, and have declared a common goal.  This is happening as I write this.  If you’re feeling alone, hopeless, and isolated, reach out to others who are your political brothers and sisters.  Once you do this, you will begin to feel a part of something that is much bigger than yourself.  This will embolden and inspire you.  You’ll see that lots and lots of people have your back.

You will also discover resistance movements and find out about street protests and planned acts of resistance and civil disobedience.  Join one and become an activist.  Use your feet to move through the streets.  As your feet carry you along, your voices will rise up to say “No!”

My feeling is the fascists are really mostly bluster.  (It is no accident that the most obnoxious ones hide behind fake Twitter handles, afraid to show their true identities.)  Stand up to them.  Get in their faces.  And they will ultimately slink away.

Are You Looking for a Tutor or Academic Success Coach in San Antonio, Texas?

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Me, Troy Headrick, Your Tutor and Academic Success Coach

Having Trouble in School?  Hire Me!

When you make an appointment with me, you’re not getting just a tutor; you’re getting a veteran educator and academic success coach.

I have spent most of my professional life in classrooms, doing everything within my power to help students succeed.  I have taught at community colleges, universities, teacher-training schools, and language institutes both in the US and abroad.  One of my strengths as a teacher—and I pride myself on this—is working individually with pupils to help them optimize their performance.

During my many years of experience as a teacher and tutor, I have developed a sophisticated educational philosophy.  A key component is that I see learners as “whole people,” meaning I take a very holistic approach when working with them.  If a student is struggling with school work, it might not necessarily be the subject matter itself that is holding him or her back.  In fact, there are a lot of possible contributing factors, including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Not understanding assignments or “what the teacher wants”
  • Not being able to manage time wisely
  • Not understanding how to break large tasks down into doable chunks
  • Not understanding the importance of “process” when doing assignments

In conclusion, if you choose to work with me, I guarantee not only success but an improvement in your attitude about school and learning.

*Students or parents who want to see my full CV should simple request one by sending an email to troyheadrick@gmail.com.

Check out My Education–See, I Was a Student Too

  • BA (cum laude) in Political Science (Angelo State University, San Angelo, TX)
  • MA in English (Texas A&M University, College Station, TX)
  • PhD studies in English (Texas A&M University, College Station, TX)

Things I Can Help You With

  • Community College and University Subject Areas
    • Academic success
    • Academic writing
    • Creative writing
    • Critical and analytical reading
    • English
    • ESL
    • Essay writing
    • Film analysis
    • Literature or textual analysis
    • Research methodology
    • Research writing
  • High School Subject Areas
    • Academic success
    • Academic writing
    • College Prep
    • Creative writing
    • Critical and analytical reading
    • English
    • ESL
    • Essay writing
    • Film analysis
    • Literature or text analysis
    • Research methodology
    • Research writing

Get in Touch!

A Little More about Me (If You’re Interested)

I am married to a wonderful Egyptian woman, someone I met while I was living in Cairo and teaching in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at The American University in Cairo. I am a very international person and consider myself a “citizen of the world” even though I currently live in San Antonio, which, by the way, is my birthplace.  I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, in Poland, in the mid-90s, an accomplishment I am very proud of. I have also lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. I have traveled extensively, especially in Europe. I am a published writer and ex-professional artist. I enjoy exercising and doing all sorts of fun things with Azza, my wife and best friend.

What about Money and Getting Started?

I charge $35 per hour.  There are many things I can help you with that may not take a full sixty minutes.  If that’s the case, I’ll charge you only for that portion of the hour we use.

Now, if you’re interested, send me an introductory email at troyheadrick@gmail.com and we’ll go from there.

The Accidental Teacher: An Essay and Memoir (Part 9)

I have had a pretty unique job during most of my adult life.  I have been a teacher—for what seems like forever now—but I’ve never really been the sort who wanted my students to become more knowledgeable, which I associate with acquiring information.  Instead, I have tried to help them hone skills that promote wisdom or shrewdness.  In other words, I haven’t focused on what they should know but on how they should know.  “How” one knows is often referred to as thinking.

Most people believe that thinking comes naturally to everyone because we’re all born with brains.  It’s true we’re born with this organ, but there is a world of difference between run-of-the-mill thinking and critical thinking (or good thinking), just as there is a world of difference between the sounds made when my untrained fingers hit the keys of a piano and the music produced by a world-class concert pianist when his or her fingers touch the ivory.

There are a million things which interfere with good thinking.  At the moment, I don’t have time to get into all these factors.  The old saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” explains one of the most important influences on our intellectual development.  Most grow up thinking in the same way their parents did and thus believing in the same things too.  Our parents are our first models and their influence leaves a deep imprint.  To be able to “fall far from the tree” requires that we have to, at some point, question our parents’ way of seeing the world and this takes great courage.  In fact, there is no activity in life that requires more bravery than to think critically because to do so one must sometimes say “no” when important others (or maybe even the whole community or world) is saying “yes.”  Saying no when others are saying yes can be costly or even dangerous.  It’s certainly easier (and more comfortable) to just go with the flow.

I’m thinking a lot about thinking these days because that’s what I do.  Plus, it is campaign season in America and that means the news is full of stories about powerful and ambitious people putting their thinking on display in an attempt to get others to vote for them.  In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll just go ahead and tell you that politicians with the most progressive points of view generally tend to think a lot better—I’m not talking about their ideas, which I also find attractive, but about the methods they use to formulate their ideas and then state them to the public—than do conservatives.  Political conservatives—I actually like to call them “regressives”—make a lot of very classical thinking mistakes that many others might not catch because they aren’t trained to look for them the way I am.  In fact, regressive politicians often make arguments that simply leave me shaking my head.  The fact that so many Americans find such unskilled thinking attractive often makes me despair about the future of the country.

At this point I should probably tell you that I made myself a promise several years ago.  I promised to do whatever was necessary to become the best thinker I could possibly become even if this meant that I would ultimately have to embrace very unpopular ideas.  In my attempt to constantly improve myself intellectually, I often find myself butting heads with what is called “conventional wisdom,” which is mostly a first-rate oxymoron.

I want to conclude by reiterating something I said in a previous blog.  Critical thinking is a way of being.  It is a method of living life with great integrity.  It is not something I turn on and off at will.  It has become the way I conduct myself in this world.

The Accidental Teacher: An Essay and Memoir (Part 8)

I may have become a teacher by sheer accident, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to vigorously stand up for my profession or for my colleagues in the trenches.  By the way, many of these colleagues do incredibly important work under tremendous duress.

In “Teacher Autonomy Declined over Past Decline, New Data Shows,” Tim Walker writes that “classroom autonomy is a major factor in determining level of job satisfaction [among teachers]” because “it speaks to whether educators are treated as professionals.”  In other words, taking away teachers’ freedom of self-determination sends a very powerful message to those who are on the losing end of the stick.  It says we no longer trust you to make important decisions about how you do your work.  We think you are incapable of acting responsibly on your own or thinking for yourself.  We are worried that you’re going to do and say the wrong things.  So, to keep this from happening, we will provide you with a script and ask you to do nothing more than read from it.  Memorize your lines, and for heaven’s sake, don’t improvise.

Is it any wonder that so many teachers are feeling so demoralized?

Listen.  Teachers are not stupid people.  They have been educated in fine universities and deserve the sort of respect given to those with similar credentials who work in other fields.  This whole push to turn educators into functionaries (or automatons or script readers or whatever term you want to use) tells them everything they need to know about how their bosses view them.  If their “superiors” really thought they were entirely capable, then scripts and such wouldn’t be needed.  After all, a script is a kind of crutch that is given only to those who are deemed incapable of walking on their own.  Am I right?

This loss of autonomy isn’t just happening at public schools.  In fact, it happened at my last two university gigs—at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and at The American University in Cairo, in Cairo, Egypt—places where I was hired to teach credit-bearing writing, research, critical reading and thinking courses to first and second-year students.  Though both cases were bad, the most grievous took place in Egypt.

When I was first hired by the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at AUC, instructors were allowed to design they own courses as long as they helped students meet a broad set of learning objectives.  These educational goals included helping pupils become better thinkers as a result of developing their critical reading, writing, and research skills.  Everything was fine during my first two or three years in the department.  About the fourth year I was there, though, something began to change.  Someone (or some group)—decision-making was kept pretty opaque so none of us had any real idea who was pulling the strings—decided there was too much variety in the kinds of classes being offered.  (No evidence was provided to demonstrate that this variety was having any sort of detrimental effect on students or their abilities to function within the university.)  Anyway, eventually this decision led the department to create a very prescriptive course template that was handed out to all.  Teachers could still apply to design classes provided that their proposals met a very set narrow set of parameters, many of which made no sense to most of the faculty, especially to those with many years of teaching and course development experience.

I decided to play along and turned in a proposal only to have it rejected.  This came as a shock to me since I had been a successful course designer for more than twenty-five years.  Over these decades my creations had been looked at my many dozens of sets of eyes and had passed all sorts of scrutiny.  Additionally, many of my classes had been deemed so well put together and successful that they had been offered as models to other instructors, even to those in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at AUC, the very place that was now telling me my newest proposal was a failure.

So, for the first time in my professional life I was not allowed to create a course and ended up teaching from a syllabus that was simply handed to me.  Needless to say, I never really believed in the class—I’m a veteran who has trouble teaching unless I feel that I have “ownership” of the thing being taught.  I’m sure this lack of passion manifested itself in many visible ways, which meant students could feel, from day one, that my heart wasn’t fully involved in the project.

Two semesters later, I handed in a letter of resignation and shortly thereafter said goodbye to the school after seven years.  I was certainly not alone in my decision to leave.  As a matter of fact, the department lost twenty-five percent of its instructors the term I departed.  This, by the way, was an unprecedented loss and should have sent a strong message to those in charge.

 

The Accidental Teacher: An Essay and Memoir (Part 7)

I think I’m having a midlife crisis. Some men, when they find themselves in a similar situation, go out and buy themselves a toupee or a snazzy sports car, but that’s not my way. My way is to sit down and write about my life as a teacher. I guess you could say that this blog has become therapy.

It’s funny (and a little scary too) how big of a role the workplace plays in turning us into the human beings we eventually become. My work certainly has played a key role in causing this crisis I’m facing.

This morning, when I was getting ready to step into the shower at 5 a.m. to get ready to go to work, I started thinking about my retirement. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the day when I can finally walk away from the classroom. That thought led to a memory of a conversation I recently had with a fellow who teaches at my current place of employment. He is seventy and still coming in, every day, to put in his six hours up in front of students. When I asked him about retirement, he said, “I tried that, for a while, but got bored, so I decided to start working again.”

FYI: Words you will never hear coming out of Troy Headrick’s mouth: “I got bored with retirement so I went back to work again.”

Yes, I’m sure I’m having a midlife crisis. I know this because I have little patience for silliness at work. I also have little tolerance for people who want to preach to me about how I should be doing my job. These “experts” are often about the age my children would be, if I had children. Lately, it’s been students who’ve been offering this “advice.” Would I use “anger” to describe my current mindset? Not really. I’m more like exasperated.

Lots of teachers end up getting beaten down by what our education system has become. Actually, come to think of it, it’s “schooling” that’s the problem, not education. There are important differences between the former and the latter. The former is what drives so many teachers crazy. Education is pure and wonderful. It sets us free. Schooling enslaves us. It turns us into bureaucratic idiots who have crises. The distinctions between these two is further clarified in this very interesting letter, written by Gerald J. Conti, a long-time teacher who finally decided to throw in the towel, primarily because schooling today is “data driven” and emphasizes teacher “conformity, standardization, testing, and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core.” Conti also points out that “creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled.”

One of the things that has bothered me over the years is this: Back when I was a serious learner, when I was in college and grad school, I could honestly say that I was engaged in something noble and enriching. But not long after I became a teacher, especially at the college and university levels, I got caught up in a system that was far too often dispiriting and demeaning. Like Conti, I had to begin focusing on petty things, which turned me into a petty person. Too much of my time was spent on learning how to navigate the territory of the academic department I was working for without getting into trouble. As a result, I got good at acting like a robot and playing workplace politics but almost forgot how to read and think. Meanwhile, I’d been hired to do reading and thinking with my students.

Right here, I’d like to insert an important qualifier. My current place of employment, the institute I’ve been working at for nearly half a year, has hired me to “train,” not “teach,” even though I work in a classroom. This difference in terminology suggests something important. There is not even a hint of pretentiousness at my new gig. What I do is very mechanical and straightforward, and thus the expectations are crystal clear. This allows administrators to be a lot more honest with me, and I, in return, can be honest with myself and my students. And, as the old saying goes, honesty is the best policy.

The university taught me how to think critically and to cherish such thinking. Then I went to work and listened to a zillion school administrators speak emotively about the importance of instilling critical thinking in students. (By the way, those who practice critical thinking are, de facto, required to question everything and to accept practices, ideas, and beliefs only after they have survived a very withering scrutiny.) This double standard—critical thinking is a good thing to ask others to do and to apply to everything except us and our institution—puts teachers in a bind. They are torn between the way they have taught themselves to live and think and how their bosses tell them to live and think. My last sentence raises an important point: Being a critical thinker is about how one lives in the world and interacts with reality. It is a mode of being. Critical thinking is not something I turn on and off like a light switch. I live it all the time.

I can see that I’m doing a little critical thinking right now and wonder if I should be praised or chastised for doing so?

That’s a very good question, one I’ll have to ponder awhile. As I do so, I can feel my crisis deepening…