For All I Know

I've been enjoying the annual Teachers' Day holiday in this Far Place more than somewhat today. Also looking forward to a week off between terms lying ahead of me. However, there's the little matter of our annual Drama Camp for my ACSIS guys, which we're running from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning, to take care of first. Not that I regard that as burdensome - when the point of one's work is obvious it really isn't work any more.

Talking about work, it occurred to me earlier in the day that I've been doing this job - teaching, that is - for exactly thirty-five years now, without a break - except for the very welcome vacations, like the one coming up. I started teaching in the first week of September 1978. That's a fair amount of time, I suppose, but the odd thing is that I really can't say I know that much more about how to do what I'm doing now than I did when I started. I'm fascinated by all these educational johnnies who seem to know so much about how it should be done. I'm doubtful about pretty much every thing except the blindingly obvious, but the blindingly obvious has served me pretty well. So all I'm going to say now I knew in 1978. The problem was, I couldn't do it then, not for a while anyway; but now I hope I can.

So here it is: what I know about teaching well. 1) Be as clear as you can. 2) Try to be fair to everyone. 3) Sugar the pill - most people don't like learning new things so try and be entertaining if possible. If not, at least be clear. 4) Mark work thoroughly and return it quickly. (This is a sub-set of being fair, but worth a line of its own.)

And that's it, really. No wonder I've never been able to write a book about it, or even an article. Anyway, it got me through thirty-five years reasonably in one piece.