Confession of a retiring teacher

I never particularly liked children.

Had I been working in a warehouse, or picking apples on an orchard, this would not have posed a problem at all.

But I have been teaching children aged 12 to 18 since the early 1980s. I still teach, albeit currently easing into part-time and casual work.

And from the feedback which has filtered back to me over the decades, both anecdotal and formal, I have probably been very good at my job (and probably more modest than it might sound from reading this).

So, it is time, as I contemplate the end of my teaching career, to make a confession:

I did not start teaching because I loved kids or working with them.

The value of learning

Rather, it was more that I strongly believed in the value of learning. Lifelong learning, the preciousness of education. The old ‘knowledge is power’ idea, which I still cling to despite growing evidence to the contrary (think: Trump, misinformation, antivaxxers, lies without consequences in the public domain globally, a ‘post-truth’ world).

I like learning and therefore I wanted to be part of the flipside of learning, which in my mind is teaching. I’d had several excellent teachers myself as a child and I was curious to see if I could become one of them. They were great role models and I looked up to them. I secretly wanted at least a few students from my decades of teaching to have that same sort of respect for me.

‘Remember Mr. H.? He was a bit weird, but that guy was a great teacher! He changed my life’.

I needed a job

I admit that there was also a pragmatic element to my becoming a teacher.

I had an arts degree, admittedly from an excellent university, and it did not lead directly to any job that I’m aware of. I enjoyed doing the degree and learnt a lot, both in and out of the official course. Regardless, the most obvious default position for any arts graduate is a little further study and to qualify as a teacher.

That is exactly what I did.

I then took the first job which was offered to me in a small rural school. The next 38 years followed in a blur from there.

Now before parents out there start trolling me or demanding that educational authorities remove my name from the teacher register because of my inappropriate attitude, a few points need to be emphasized.

1. I enjoy teaching and am good at it

Firstly, I don’t just love learning. I enjoy teaching once I’m in an actual classroom with real students in front of me.

Always have, always will.

Even when I feel completely disillusioned with the world (and have no desire to teach another lesson in my life), once I enter a classroom and look at expectant faces, something shifts inside me.

It is completely instinctive. A teacher takes over.

I hear a male speaking in an authoritative voice, pausing to check engagement. I see them responding, and I then understand that the voice is mine. It is as close to an out of body experience as I get. I marvel that the guy at the front is channeling something to engage the students and get things happening.

That (modest) guy is me, or at least my teaching persona.

I become enthused in spite of myself, trying to get into their heads, challenging them, provoking them, forcing them to engage in any way.

Because once they fall into the trap of engaging, I have them and can work on them from there.

Am I overstating my impact here? Obviously. Not all lessons go well, and there are plenty of lessons where it is a matter of the students simply working independently and quietly. An ape could supervise such lessons.

And sometimes a student will behave badly. A mini-crisis then occurs, but by and large my premise is true – I love learning, enjoy teaching and am apparently on the right end of competent at it.

2. I have grown to like them!

Secondly, somewhere along the line I learned to get enjoyment from interacting with children.

I really don’t want my last statement taken out of context, as it easily could be (think Jack Black in School of Rock 'I've touched your children and they've touched me').

No!

To clarify what I’m trying to say: I’ve learnt to appreciate that students are indeed real human beings, with feelings, thoughts, and problems just like I have. They are just younger and usually smaller than me.

I’m there to work out where they are currently ‘at’ and to then help them on a journey to know and understand more than they currently do. They may even enjoy much of it. I empathize as much as I’m able and try to help them to learn stuff that I have to teach them, much of which I do genuinely believe in.

Having children of my own has helped me a little in learning to like students but, to be honest, I was already well along in that process before I became a father. It is not essential to be a parent to be a good teacher, despite some parents spruiking this view. But it has helped me empathize at times, I admit.

Teaching is about empathy and a belief in education as an end in itself, as well as all the techniques, rebranded and recycled as they invariably are.

3. Students lift me when I'm angry and down

It has taken me along time to recognize and admit this final point. I can be feeling disillusioned with the state of the world. I then walk into school grounds and have students running at me, shouting genuine greetings.

I can’t remain as angry when this happens.

Summary

It is true that I did not feel any desire to interact with mixed up teenagers when I started out as a teacher in my early twenties. There was no overt burning desire to help them, or to care about them beyond the classroom. They were weird creatures who I privately felt a little wary of.

I started out knowing that I had to pretend to be this passionate, caring person. I knew that it was expected of me.

But something strange happened to me quite quickly – I became the persona and started to genuinely care.

Shock. Horror.

Nobody was more surprised than I was, but I couldn’t talk about it without blowing the fact that I’d only pretended up until now.

There is a lot more I could say. Decades of teaching does that to you, but I'll spare you.

It's sufficient to say that I've found that I do actually care (a bit) about students I engage with. That grew as life happened to me and things went wrong in my 'other' out-of-school life. I understood that, like me, not all students come into a classroom from perfect circumstances.

More recently the warmth many students and recent ex-students have shown to me has humbled me. I have not always been deserving of it but that’s okay – there were tough times when I deserved more and it was not forthcoming, right?

I definitely did not feel an affinity with children when I decided to teach.

I'm reasonably confident that this has changed.