Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

July, 23 2008
(Being a teacher)
From the Journal of Derek Rury

I just had my first exam proctoring experience and I have to admit, it made me feel a tad uneasy. I never thought that I would be the person ominously overseeing a test, silently lurking in between desks, hovering over shoulders. But I wasn’t so much checking to see how the students were doing, but more so how I did as a teacher, checking to see whether or not I had taught them well enough to answer correctly. I had never really been accountable for any sort of teaching or tutoring, but here, my work was itself, being tested. It was a bit frustrating and discouraging to look over a student’s shoulder only to see that he had could not express that Clark was taller than Lois and that Lex was older than Clark (we learned descriptions) despite my uncanny, four color, stick figure visual aide. In my defense, Lex had a beard and a cane. A cane! People with canes are old. It’s universal. And even it it’s not, it’s certainly known around the world that a person with a cane is older than someone who doesn’t. It’s merely science. Oh well. Perhaps my artistic skills aren’t what the used to be . But that wasn’t the only unnerving part. I think I was more weirded out by the emotion of sympathy I felt for the students. I mean, I had always imagined what it would be like to be the teacher. The all knowing, all powerful teacher, who spends every second figuring out ways to torture students. When I was a student, I wanted to experience that power. I always knew that the teacher could feel any sense of uneasiness I gave off, and my impression was that they fed off of that, it gave them strength, like how Superman draws his power from the sun. This impression was based on the theory that all teachers sought out to destroy student’s lives. But now that the proverbial shoe is on the other foot (not a phrase that’s used much here, because it probably doesn’t apply. Less than half of the students in class today were wearing some form of footwear), I know that none of that is true. I felt for my students. A part of me wanted to be one of them, in that instance. That’s because a part of me will always be a kid. A part of me will always be a student, rebelling against the tyranny of my teachers. Hopefully I can be a teacher that won’t elicit that reaction. Hopefully I can be the kind of teacher I always wanted as a student.

Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd