by JESSE SCACCIA
I don’t have time to be a teacher right now.
I’m in grad school. I have a thesis due in less than two months. I have projects on the side I’m passionate about, such as this website. I have jobs on the side I need to keep in order to pay my bills.
I have a girlfriend. Sometimes, I even have friends.
Like I said, I don’t have time to be a teacher right now. Actually, that’s not exactly true. I can make it to class everyday. More specifically, right now, I don’t have time to be a good teacher.
Time slips away, leaves you with nothing, mister.
To be a ‘good’ teacher, or at least how I’ve come to imagine a good teacher from my decades of being a student, education school, and my time in the profession, takes uncountable hours. Coming up with imaginative and relevant lesson plans every day takes lots and lots of time. Finding the best readings takes lots and lots of time. Grading papers well takes, when you’re an English teacher, an insane amount of time.
The act of teaching well is not finite; it is the opposite. It’s more like, in some way, space, in the way there are literally endless bits to explore, track, and conquer.
When a person does not have enough time in their lives, the first thing they should do is see what they can eliminate, right? Well, looking at my list of responsibilities, I can’t get rid of anything. I already rarely see my friends, or at least that’s how it feels. I never talk to my family. When I take my clothes off to take a shower the mirror all but comes alive to tell me, Dang, you need to be getting to the gym more often, my man. So this just is how it is. This is my life, at least for the foreseeable future. Good to the last drop.
If I can be honest with those of you who’ve read this far, I feel completely overwhelmed. I feel like I’m doing everything in my life mediocrely. (See, I’m even using words like ‘mediocrely.’) I’m in second gear, third at best, all day long.
But there’s one thing that I know that I can, and I should do well. And I know that if I do that one thing well I’ll be at least a decent teacher. Maybe, believe it or not, a fairly good one:
I can be all there during class.
I can forget about my other responsibilities. I can forget about the fight I just had with my girlfriend. I can pretend not to be tired. I can refrain from–and you’re lying if you say you’ve never done this–but I can refrain from seeing if anyone called or texted during class time.
I can stand up straight. I can project my voice. I can look my students in the eyes with all the intelligence and engagement and empathy I have in my soul, and I can teach them well for those 50 minutes at a shot.
And even though I don’t have time to do all the bells and whistles of good teaching, that I can do.
