He was a terrible teacher

He was a terrible teacher. Unless you wanted to learn. And this pretty much kept him in hot water with parents because most of their kids didn't want to learn, and most of the parents preferred to concentrate on his teaching deficiencies rather than their children's learning deficiencies.

There was no doubt he was a bad teacher, and in today's classrooms while there are many bad teachers, he was bad according to a simple definition that was easy to apply and easier to act on. He was short tempered, talked too much, didn't talk enough at times, sometimes was way over the student's heads, and, most importantly, usually didn't take the time to convey to his students the verbal assurances considered necessary for proper teaching. Not enough "attaboys" his first principal wrote in his evaluation when he was student teaching. And so he was fired because ultimately, he couldn't learn what he needed to in order to survive. Someone needed to teach him how to reach students who preferred not to be reached. It wasn't ironic that someone who hadn't been taught could not teach.

What was ironic was that both teacher and student couldn't learn because they were caught in traditional structures which formed expectations of teaching and learning that were impossible to meet.

Unless, of course, a student wanted to learn. Then, this environment was perfect, and this "teacher" was perfect.

But, in order to get into this learning environment - this teachable moment that would last for years - the normal infrastructure of solitary study, lectures and notes, testing, grading, and occasional cheating, had to be eliminated. When you're on crutches because you don't want to be in a wheelchair, your learning comes from a terrible teacher - stares and exclusion. When you're in quiet pain and your patience is gone by lunch and somebody flips your ear, your learning comes from an impatient teacher - your reaction without a smile. And at the end of the day, when you've learned what nobody else knows, plus what everybody else knows, you must synthesize it all into a positive frame before the bitterness makes you toxic.

And you have to do this every day. When you get up, you reinvent yourself because the first thing you think of isn't the birds or the sun, or that you've got a test, or that you have to go to the bathroom, it's how much you hurt. And the teacher - arthritis - makes sure you respect its wishes.

And the test from this teacher is whether you've accepted the dogma of pain which says loudly and convincingly, "don't even try."

If you still keep trying, you fail this teacher's test, which means you've continued to learn, which means you've succeeded.

Because it is a terrible teacher. Unless you want to learn.