matching tracksuits

The first week of school is behind us. A hectic week of bureaucracy and smiles. The former comes from all the forms and materials we distribute to students and then take back up almost immediately. “Bring this back before the end of the first week!” The latter comes from my yearly effort to be genuinely friendly.

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There’s an old saying — advice to new teachers, really — that a teacher should never smile before Christmas. By the end of every school year, I’m so frustrated with my failures in dealing with this or that disruptive or disrespectful (somewhat synonymous in many ways) student that I promise myself that next year I will be a rock until Christmas. I will lay down the law and accept no compromise. I will be a drill instructor. I will pound them into submission and then convince them I’m a decent and nice guy.

Yet summer wanes, my planning progresses, and I inevitably turn my thoughts to what I want to do during the first days of school. And it occurs to me that I would most definitely not like to be beaten into submission as an initial experience with anyone. It would be hard to overcome the negative feelings such a first impression would create.

So when the first day of school arrives, I begin again to walk the ever-wiggling line between being a kind authoritative and devolving into a kind permissive teacher. Students might find the first overbearing at times but have a general faith — now and in the future — that all was done for their best; students find the second to be a favorite teacher while in middle school, only to look back on the teacher as one who was “nice but didn’t teach us much.”

Last week — the first week back — was the honeymoon period. The real test now begins. The sad thing is, I already have my eye on one or two that I believe will be major problems before the end of the first quarter. If I can work effectively with students and keep it only to one or two, it will be a great success.

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• Teachers good and bad (geneveith.com)

Do much course work in education and you’ll soon find yourself covering some of the same names in various classes: Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson, Binet, Skinner, Kohlberg, and the list goes on.

It’s frustrating to cover the same material in course after course, but the advantage is that it sits solidly in your head, and you find yourself thinking about it at the oddest times.

For example, L and I sit down to play chess. Our chess is usually random motions of random pieces, but instructive all the same: she learns that we take turns, and that the object of the game is to defeat your opponent by taking pieces. It’s fun, but her attention span usually only last a few minutes before it’s time to have “tea” or feed her baby or any number of other priorities.

Today, we try something new. I tell her I’m going to set up pieces on my end of the board, and she needs to try to copy them on her end. A real challenge, to be sure. It is quite taxing on her spacial intelligence, for I am asking her to create a mirror image, which requires quite a bit of mental spacial manipulation.

I think of Piaget and Erikson — does she have the mental development for the task at hand. Technically, those gentlemen would probably say, “No.”

“She’s still at the very beginning of the preoperational state,” Piaget says.

Forget ed psych — let’s have some challenging fun.

The beginning is slow, and it takes her a good ten minutes to figure out that she’s supposed to be mirroring my pieces. But she puts everything together slowly, and it’s obvious she can do it.

More importantly,  she loves it. And I figure it must be in her “zone of proximal development,” for she’s having great difficulty, but slowly she’s mastering it.

“Let’s do it again!”

And so we do it many times. Each time, I alter the order in which I put the pieces on the board. First one pawn, then the other, then a knight and bishop beside each other before moving to the other side. Sometimes a mix of major pieces and pawns.

Toward the end, I give her the real challenge: most of the major pieces and some of the pawns are on the board when I tell her, “Figure it out.”

She looks at my pieces, looks at her own, back at mine, and suddenly, in a flash, her side of the board is perfect.

Once we get the piece positioning down, we’ll start learning how the pawns move.

I first arrived in Poland in June 1996. I stayed until June 1998, when I went home for the summer before returning for a third year. In 2000, I went back to Poland for a week. In 2001, I moved back to Poland to teach English, returning to the States for the summer of 2002. K and I left for American in 2005 and made our first return visit in 2008. Now it’s 2010, and I’m back in Poland for the fourth, maybe fifth time. Each time I arrive, one of the highlights has always been the unexpected encounter with former students. 

Even when I lived here, I would bump into kids I hadn’t seen in a couple of years (by then, adults), and we would chat a bit. It’s great to see what your efforts have led to. Not all of them use English on a regular basis, but some do. Several of my students became English teachers (four that I can think of). A couple of them used English to communicate with the individual who would eventually become his/her spouse. Several of them worked abroad and used English with their employers. 

During our return of 2008, I met at least ten former students. I bumped into four or five at a folk festival. One or two worked in shops that I visited. One married the son of a neighbor of my in-law’s. I met a few at the Wednesday market in Jablonka. Each time, it was the same conversation: what they’re doing; what I’m doing; plans for the future. Maybe a word or two about this or that amusing incident that happened in class years ago. 

This year, I’ve met one, and only in passing, literally: he was in a car, I was on foot with the family. And that stands to reason: the kids I taught during my first three years are now in their late-twenties or early thirties. They have families of their own, and most likely they have achieved their wish of moving out of the village. I’ve heard as much about a few. The kids that I taught during my second stint in Poland are now in their early- to mid-twenties. They’re done with college, possibly married, with new worries and new passions. 

I walk down the street now and see young, new faces. I search the features for a similarity — perhaps he or she is a younger sibling of this or that student. Very unlikely, I realize, but I only recently realized why it’s so unlikely. The kids who are now in high school, whom I would now be teaching, were only newborns when I first arrived. At most, they were two or three years old. 

It’s a different world. 

K has noted the same thing. “I go into the shops,” she told a friend, “And every single face behind the counter is new.” The teenagers have grown up, moved on, and miraculously, others have filled their spots. 

It’s really the curse of being a teacher: I stand still in time. I remain with one of the twelve milestones of one’s life, and I get older while the kids get relatively younger. 

Heraclitus, by Johannes Moreelse

It’s also the surprise of the passing of time. Once, we all thought we were ageless, possessors of infinite youth and endless energy. As adults, we go back to a spot where we felt that invincibility, and though we shouldn’t be, we’re surprised that nothing is the same, either with ourselves or with the environment itself. 

Naturally, in noting all of this, I’m saying nothing new. Heraclitus discussed it 2,500 years ago, using his famous “never see the same river twice” metaphor to illustrate the centrality of change in the universe. Perhaps part of the nature of change is its sensitiveness. We don’t even realize it’s happened until we return to one of the poles of our lives that serve to solidify and give meaning to our lives, and then we see how much the world — including us — has grown.

The school year is nearing completion: just under two more weeks remain. Everyone — teachers, students, administrators, custodial staff — everyone in the building is counting the days.

Such an odd thing: we’ve spent 170+ days working together, and we’re all sick of each other, rather like a family on a long vacation. A bit of time apart and all would be well. Yet “a bit of time apart” is impossible: the students move on, and we teachers remain, waiting for the next group.

It’s as if we’re on a cosmic treadmill. We take a few steps with the kids, and though we all (teachers, students, parents, administrators) keep walking, the students slowly move on ahead of us teachers, occasionally looking back with a smile of thanks, occasionally staring straight ahead, occasionally — tragically — looking down.

“I’m so sick of all this,” we all mutter, but come what may, there will be tears on the final day, and I’ll probably be accused of laughing at someone’s tears as I was last year. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you,” I’ll insist. “I’m just smiling because it’s all rather sweet.”

It’s this time of year that I start making resolutions for the next year. Knee deep in all the mistakes I’ve made this year, I resolve not to do this or that, promise myself to be more systematic about some thing or other, commit myself publicly to more of this, less of that. I’ve a six-page, detailed outline of changes I’ll be making in one course next year, and I’ve only just begun recording my thoughts and plans. (A lesson learned from last year: all the brilliant ideas one has about changes to this or that unit tend to disappear the day school is out.)

And in the midst of all this planning for next year while making sure this year ends positively and productively comes a call from a parent. The long conversation includes a story about how her son came into my class apprehensive. Now he admits that the class is “alright” because I’m a “cool” teacher.

And another student sends me an email: “Thank you for helping me get through this year maintaining my grades.”

Bittersweet moments, indeed.