My First English Department Meeting

I call this photo "Fuddy-Duddies at Work."  It's not my picture. I got it from Google images, but it reminds me of the department meetings from my first teaching job. I didn't think I needed to attend dept. meetings.  After all, I already knew everything. What 22 year old doesn't?

But I went to my first meeting with an open mind, all prepared to glean whatever nuggets of wisdom I could from my older colleagues. There was one agenda item; "Composition Writing." The entire hour-long meeting was spent discussing whether or not students should be required to write their compositions in blue ink or black ink. I had no idea there could be that many opinions about ink color, or that there could be such passion about one over the other! They didn't ask me what I thought. They asked me what color I used when I was in high school. I said that my teachers didn't care as long as I had something worthwhile to say. That triggered some harrumphing around the room. They didn't ask me any more questions until several meetings later.

Proper School Discipline

I'm not making this up...teachers used to paddle their students. It was an accepted and expected form of discipline. I was paddled myself a couple times when I was a kid; once for quacking like a duck in Biology class and once for pointing out an error in my Algebra teacher's calculation. Both of those paddlings took place in Michigan, and both were when I was an 8th grader. Our Algebra teacher was an awesome paddler. As students acted out or messed up in some way, he put names on the board. At the end of the hour, he made tournament-like brackets with all the names and flipped a coin to see who advanced until he ended up with one name who took the hit for the whole class. So you can imagine how much learning took place for the students whose names were on the board, waiting to see who would end up "winning" the paddle tourney!

My first teaching job was as an 8th grade English teacher. I worked in one of those old, three-story brick school buildings, and I was on the second floor. One hot, fall day, I asked a boy to open the back windows, which he did. He lingered at the window for a while and then sat back down. A few minutes later, my principal came storming into my room and dragged the boy out of his desk and out into the hall.  Apparently, the boy had dropped a bunch of crayons out the window, which explained the lingering. After school, I was summoned to the principal's office as a witness. "Bend over!" bellowed the principal, and for a second there I thought he was talking to me. Then he picked up his weapon and twirled it. Nothing invoked fear in a middle school kid quite like the school paddle. They were made out of hard wood about an inch thick. The really effective ones had penny-sized holes drilled in them to make them swing harder and faster. This particular principal made the kids sign his paddle after he hit them with it. The kid had to grab his ankles and hold still for three hard whacks, each one lifting him off his feet a little. I didn't cry, but I almost did.  I didn't want to be one of those mean teachers, and yet there I was watching a really nice kid possibly getting his butt bones splintered. From then on, I made sure my students stayed out of trouble. The principal never again saw any of them do anything wrong in my room. In retrospect, maybe there was some method to his madness.

What happened to me being a blogger?

What? I started this blog how many years ago?! Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I got busy and sort of forgot about it. Now I'm taking a class in which I am required to create and share a blog, so here I am again. I think my topic for awhile will be what it's like to be an educator for most of your adult life and then start thinking about doing something altogether different. I retired about a year and a half ago, but I'm still going to school every day and I'm still the principal. I'm like a "rent-a-principal." It's a great deal for the school because it saves the district many thousands of dollars since they no longer have to pay my benefits. It's a great deal for me because the pressure is off (sort of) in that I don't have a contract to speak of, so my commitment is all in my head. But deal or no deal, it's time for me to transition out of school. I've outgrown it. Normal human beings do that by age 18. It took me until my current age, which is older than 18...way older! I really meant to become a teacher and stay a teacher all the way to retirement. I got sidetracked. Besides high schools, other places I've worked include a city newspaper, small town radio station, hospital morgue, chamber of commerce, various restaurants, a golf course, women's clothing store, three different universities, a public library, and a Detroit car factory. Because I jumped around from thing to thing so much for so long, it surprises me that I have now lived in the same house and kept the same job for the last 16 years. I think five or so years doing the same thing in the same place is long enough, but these last 16 years have flown by so fast I didn't notice! But now I'm noticing. Sixteen years!!? Who am I kidding? That's long enough and bordering on too long.