Handbook book club, #2

You may not have known this, but I have a degenerative disease. And it is called Elmo-titis.

Yesterday evening, I was a little hoarse. (Groucho Marx joke here.) By this morning? No voice at all, except something high, squeaky, rumbly, and quiet. Kind of like Elmo. And, like Elmo, I'm pretty chipper, all things considered. But I fear the next step.

Anyway, as a result of the Elmo-titis, I didn't manage to get out today and work on the Athletics badge like I'd hoped to. That means . . . it's time for another round of Handbook book club!

When last we discussed this stuff, we talked a lot about the scout virtues -- cleanliness, honesty, that kind of thing. And while those are important, today we get into something that could be brutally dull but isn't: the structure of a troop.

We go through the scout concil officers fairly quickly, the president, vice president, etc., the scout commissioner, all that. The thing that interests me is the scout master. He's required to be at least twenty-one, be of good moral fiber, the basics. What's interseting is that he is specifically not required to be particularly good at the myriad tasks the Handbook assigns any good boy scout. The exact wording: "He need not be an expert at scoutcraft; a good scout master will discover experts for the various activities."

This is startlingly ahead of its time.

As some of you (those of you who've read my bio on the sidebar, at least) know, I teach school. Specifically, I teach science. Now, I have a decent amount of science-y background, but when I left grad school to start teaching, I realized something: what you know has almost no impact on how good a teacher you are. Seriously. This is hard for me to admit, because I've always been a strong believer in school. I worked hard in high school. I went to a good college and worked hard there. And I went to two separate good grad schools and worked hard at those, too. So I started out extremely good at the science I teach, and extremely hesitant to downplay the importance of learning. I walked into my classroom the first day ever, thinking that my spectacular science-ness was just going to pour all over these kids and bring them to their knees in awe.

By the end of that first day, I was crying in the parking lot.

It got better, of course, and I'm actually a little bummed now to know that my old students started class last week and Iw asn't there to see them. In the past few days, I've gotten emails from several of them, and it unquestionably makes my day. I started out terrified of them, and terrified I woudln't be able to get through to them, but over time, day by day, we managed to build a relationship that I'm really proud of.

In my planner, I have a note from one of my last year's students: "Thank you for being a fantastic science teacher. I already enjoyed science but you made the class so much fun and made learning enjoyable. You becamse my favorite class and teacher and I looked forward to it every day." First, girl spelled "every day" as two words, thank goodness, which shows you how smart she is. And second, this may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

So, as I was implying, I guess, over time you build up comfort with your students and with your job. There is a set of skills you need in order to maintain any regularity in the classroom, in order to write and organize lesson plans, is as different from knowing actual content as is knowing how to cook and knowing how to eat, and while each is different, each is also learnable. So I'm delighted that the scoutmaster simply needs to have an interest in the material rather than being an expert -- the Handbook is recognizing, years before much educational philosophy did, that there's a difference between knowing and teaching.

This is also extraordinarily relevant to my life right now. I've just switched from teaching in a rich, suburban district to teaching in the heart of Brooklyn. Once again, my first day was a rough one. Once again, I entered the classroom convinced that I knew how teaching science worked and that the kids and I would be best friends in a heartbeat. And, once again, I was unimaginably, insurmountably incorrect. It's more of the same, really -- what applies in one situation, whether it's basic science knowledge or how to keep classroom order in a central Jersey classroom in which, frankly, keeping order is not that much of a challenge, is almost irrelevant when it comes to reaching out to a specific group of individuals in a specific location at a specific time. What worked for me at my last job doesn't work here, and that's okay.

Tomorrow starts my second week at my new school. I'm ready. Just like the Handbook recommends, a desire to learn and a desire to teach will pull you a hell of a lot farther than all the knowledge you've got.

(Also, watching MTV's VMAs, I've just seen Taylor Swift singing and dancing on my regular train. I am totally blaming her for long wait times for the train this week, and now I hate a girl I've never met. Thanks, MTV. Thanks.)