A Teacher’s First Day

Do you remember your teachers? Do you remember thinking that they were perfectly confident and always in control? I always held teachers in high esteem. In high school because they had such power over us. In college because I respected their knowledge and learning. I never realized that they were people, working, striving, and trying to do a good job. And I never realized that my performance and opinion of them mattered. J. Schaap, a teacher, writes about his feelings on the first day of a new semester.

Yesterday, the first day of another long semester, I walked into a classroom of 19-year-olds whose course of study set them right in front of me for a college writing class. None of them chose to be there; it's a core course.

They don't know me; I don't know them. We're a forced marriage. So yesterday I started courting because passion sells in education; and part of my job--a significant part--is motivation. What happens in a classroom is really a species of courtship. And, after almost forty years, I don't know that I have the heart and soul for another round...Click here to read more.

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.