TO ALL TEACHERS: A 2019 Halftime Pep Talk

My 28,000 one hour shows equal 5,000 kids in the audience over a 32 year high school teaching career. The playing field—aka, my classroom from  1977 to 2010. It was a great ride! We had many winning seasons. Really. I mean it. Never a perfect, undefeated season, but always in the hunt, always finishing with a winning record.

What was the magic trick? The secret? The ace up my sleeve? We will get to that shortly but first, gather around, huddle up, it’s halftime and it’s time to have a serious gut check.

Ah, I can see the doubters out there—the teachers for whom the burdens of teaching have set you into a cynical spiral of despair. You’re down, and it’s only the half way point of the year. Your classroom seems like “Groundhog Day” (the movie) in which things that drag you down are repeated over and over.

Let’s make a list: unruly kids; way too many of them; lack of supplies; tepid admin support; parents who either don’t care, don’t want to know what’s wrong with their children—or worse, they ask you what to do!

Have I touched on some of your problems? I bet I have. But let’s not forget these mind numbing fumbles: the paycheck is dismal at best; the curriculum you are told to teach is boring, not just to the kids but to you, as well. One more thing. You have no social life, no money for one, and no idea how to get out of this funk.

Is that what’s ailing you? Yes, I know. I just caused you to cry. “Are you crying? Are you crying?

There’s no crying”… in teaching. (Okay, you can cry a little: but there is no crying in baseball). Now wipe away the tears, and as they say “Huddle up and listen.”

What makes a great teacher? I’ll tell you what. Endurance. Curiosity. Compassion. Selflessness. faith that you have something to offer those kids every single day. Ask yourself if that is what you are out there playing for? Are those qualities the ones you value, not just as a teacher, but are those the qualities you are teaching kids?

Humor. A solid work ethic. And the most important element—

That’s right. I just identified the real ‘Lesson Plans.’ You don’t teach to a test. You are the test. You set the goal. You emulate the skills that you want them to begin to value and someday maybe master.

Let me add one important quality that I implied: patience. Malcolm Gladwell (if you don’t know who he is, then you are not paying attention to the way we learn) argues it takes 10,000  hours of productive practice to master anything; a musical instrument, a sports game, the act of public speaking, and on and on. 

So, for all you young guns out there teaching: patience, endurance. It’s going to take a while to learn the art that is teaching. Each year is a marathon, and summer is when you collapse at the finish line (or try to, if you’ve saved enough money…more on that later).

So what to do? Teach them to sing. To dance. To listen. To create with their hands or finger tips. Whatever you do—you do it first and preferably with them. Show them that it’s doable. Heck, you were once a student and you did it. They can, too. Go watch “Dead Poets Society” or “Stand and Deliver” or “To Sir with Love”—break the mold. Go read my novel “Meetings at the Metaphor Café.” (I don’t mean to shamelessly plug my book, really).

I found lots of teachers who felt they hated what they were teaching. Take WWI, for example. Boring? Really? The gas used in that war is much like what Assad used on his Syrian people. It’s what Saddam Hussein used on the Kurdish citizens to keep control. It’s the weapon of choice for dictators. Ask the kids what we, as Americans, should do about it? And how different is that, really, when it comes to knowingly allowing drinking water in Flint, Michigan to be poisoned with lead? Get them pissed off. Remember, the sins of the past will repeat if you, their teacher, do not help your students to learn from the mistakes of our elders.

That’s your job. Your job is to get them to rise up. To ascend to a high level of thinking, of competence, of humanity. That is so not boring. And if you are not flying out of this huddle fired up to make a difference, then you may not belong in this arena. 50% of teachers can’t cut it and quit after less than five years. But if you have been reading this far into my pep talk, I’m betting you are not a quitter. I’m betting that you give a damn about most, if not all, of your kids.

I know the pay sucks. But stick together. Unions made the difference for me. We took pay cuts for medical coverage to kick in after we retired until 65. That was very ‘Union’ smart. We had to save for retirement, and those pensions that teachers have are golden—just ask folks in the private sector about that. You are a professional, so keep fighting for that profession. Those who can’t teach often don’t have the patience, the selflessness, the vision of a bigger picture, the persistence to get something right. They may have more money, but let me tell you, the Beatles got it right, “Money can’t buy you love.”

And when this season is over, when the scoreboard says you have won more than you lost, when the  kids start meandering out of your classroom—that’s when you will notice that ‘Thank You’ note left on your desk that reads “You don’t know how much it meant to me  when you ran out to the parking lot to ask me if I was ‘okay’. It mattered a lot.”

So, after the Super Bowl, the season really begins anew.

To quote John Keating, “What will your verse be?”