Second Formal Paper

The expressed job of a teacher is to educate the students, usually within the formal bounds of their particular topic. The students taking French are expected to know how to order coffee in a bistro under the Eiffel Tower if ever the situation should present itself. The ones taking math are expected to know how to factor a polynomial for some made up reason about how it will be necessary later in life. Even the kids in History are expected to memorize dates and names so they can win at trivia night with friends at a bar someday. In all actuality much of this information will never again get called up willingly if ever because it is all part of an expected curriculum we have to or think we want to take at the time. All through high school I had all sorts of teachers whose classes were forgettable primarily because these were the lessons they taught. While the teachers themselves are fondly remembered as people, I usually can’t remember much of what they were telling me in their classrooms. Looking back though, it becomes apparent that the less obvious role of a good teacher is to prepare us, using the confines of their given subject, for situations in the world outside of high school. Two good examples of this were my Drama teacher Ms. Love and my history teacher Mr. Mewinney.

Ms. Love was not the stereotypical burnout flower-child, all love and soft edges, kind of drama teacher depicted by many shows and movies. She was instead one of the more demanding people that I ever worked for and I learned a number of things from her that I still use in some part in my everyday life. One of the things that I used to make jokes about was how in football and many of our sports there was the “I made it onto the football team” team and the “I tried out for the football team” team. While there may have been some disappointment in not making the cut there was still the JV team to fall back to. Just about everyone who tried out got a role. This was not the case with the Oregon City Drama program. Ms. Love took pride in the shows she put on at the high school with a high level of production going into them. These could not always be shows with an ensemble of thirty people. Many of the shows had a cast of no more than ten or so people on stage. So even though there could be thirty to fifty people trying out for the show, many just could not get in. You had to show up at the auditions prepared; dressed appropriately, resume in hand, and get through your audition in a calm and collected manner. My many attempts at getting onstage always wound up in failure but I found later when I went to apply for jobs many of the same themes were present. Show up dressed nice, bring the required material and get ready to put on a convincing performance.

The second part to this lesson was that just because you had the role did not mean that it was yours. There are many things that go into a production, and if someone is not pulling their own weight than it can negatively affect the whole group. If you missed too many practices she would remove you and bring the understudy up to fill your position.  Even a place in her classroom was not secure just because you were on the roll sheet. Most of the classes she taught were multi-semester, which meant that if you were not keeping up with what was expected of you she would remove you from the roster at the turn of the next semester. Again all of this equates easily to the workplace where if you show up late enough times you will quickly find yourself unemployed. The same goes for underperformance, if you cannot uphold the expectations a job places on you then they will eventually let you go.

Mr Mewinney was another teacher that did a good job of imparting these more subtle lessons. One of the things that I liked about his class in retrospect, even though it worked against me at the time, was his strict rules and expectations. As far as he was concerned by taking his class you were obliged to complete the tasks assigned. In line with this one of the most maddening rules in his class was that you could get one-hundred percent on every assignment, but if you failed to turn in even one small five point assignment the best possible grade you could get would be a B+. Those coveted A’s were out of your reach because you failed to keep your word. While the only thing at stake in this class was a letter grade, a point off of your GPA, this again was something that moves into your interactions with people everyday. When I interact with my peers I constantly find myself giving small promises of tasks to be done or things we will do. They do the same to me, if I do this for them they will do this for me or even just volunteer to do something without any prompting. I have found it hurts a person more to forget to do one of these small things than to do it at less than one-hundred percent. It is not a grade at stake anymore but your reputation with that person. That tends to affect you more than any “permanent” record the school keeps.

Another thing he taught, though I have my doubts if it was intentional, was how to deal with obstinate people that you are forced to interact with. He was a strongly opinionated person who fancied himself a debater. At the end of the day though he was right, no matter how persuasive your argument was. While I never personally ran afoul of this a friend of mine would often leave any class she had with him incredibly angry because she would often try to question his political point of view. There were a number of times where he would use the classroom as a soapbox to rant, trying to convince us how that rest of the teachers were too liberal or the school system was too protective because when he was a student he...and then he would talk about some incident of hazing from when he was in high school. In the world outside of school you will often have to interact with people that have a point of view that differs wildly from your own and no matter how much you believe in your side, the other person has just as strong of an investment in their own side. What can be more frustrating is when these people wind up being your boss or some other figure you are supposed to defer to out of social courtesy. While he may have been going for a different lesson with his rantings his classes taught us how to deal with stubborn people.

Looking back I can see all of this much clearer than I could at the time. When I was going through this Ms Love was that mildly intimidating, impossible to please woman. Mr Mewinney was that teacher that I never got a good grade in his class who managed to anger a good group of my friends at one point or another. Seven years after I graduated high school these are the teachers that I best remember because of the non-curriculum things that I was able to take away from their classes. I think that this is a strong herald of what makes for a great teacher. While they may have not been my favorite people going through high school, these were the teachers that prepared me for life beyond high school. At the time the grade is all important and its vital that you can remember the hard facts to pass the test. When that last bell rings though and you are banished from the structured world you had known all your life, these unintentional lessons become the most important of all.