I Never Wanted to Be a Teacher

I’ll tell you a little secret about teaching.  And I’ve been teaching a long time now, over 25 years, so I should know something about it.  I never meant to be a teacher.  It was never in my plans.  I wanted to be a rock star, or an actor.  I saw myself standing on the stage taking my bows to thunderous applause.  I told my high school guidance counselor so.

I remember well being called to my counselor’s office back when I was a senior in high school.  I thought I was in trouble.  I couldn’t imagine being in trouble with Mr. Milling.  Mr. Milling looked rather like a tall, thin walrus.  He had a great mustache.  Anyway, Mr. Milling never got angry with anybody.  So I couldn’t imagine what I might have done.  It was with great relief then, when I sat in his office and he told me he wanted to go over my tests.  I don’t even remember taking any tests.  However, he assured me I had, and he was going to tell me what were my best choices for a path through life.

He told me—and I quote here, because I remember exactly what he said, that, “God had created me to be a teacher.”  That’s what he said.  They used to talk about God in school back in those days.  Actually, they still do, but that’s another story.  Anyway, he said my purpose in life was to be a teacher.  Well, back in 1973, I was fairly sure there was no way in hell that I was ever going to be a teacher.  I had nothing against teachers.  Some of my favorite people were teachers.  Of course, your average teenager has a limited pool of people from whom to choose, so that was not so very unlikely.

I thought to myself, “Oh, you silly man.  Why would I want to be a teacher?”   But I didn’t say that.  I simply told him that I had plans to make it big in the theater, or in music, so teaching would not be in the cards for me, thank you very much and have a nice day.  It was a short discussion.  I went back to my music class and promptly put the whole interview out of my mind.

Fast forward about six years.  Time and circumstances bring you to interesting places.  As it turned out, I didn’t become a teacher.  I didn’t become a famous actor or musician either—but then you know that.  No, along the way I got married, had a couple of sons, got a regular J-O-B, working as a store manager for a variety store, otherwise known as a dime store.  I was miserable.  I worked 60 to 84 hours per week for miserable pay.  We were always broke.  I had dropped out of college after a year because I was being offered such a “good” job.  And, after all, I did have responsibilities.  ‘

But then I hurt my back on the job.  I herniated a couple of discs.  I had to take off work for six weeks.  So while I was off work, they fired me.  I was not surprised.  This was the unwritten company policy.  People with injuries only ever cost the company more money over time.  So people who were hurt were fired, for one reason or another.  Now this is a long and interesting story in and of itself, but not for here and not for now.  Suffice it to say that I was off work due to my injury for a little over a year.  During that time, I went back to college.

At first, I just started taking courses to satisfy my general education requirements.  By the time I was ready to declare my major, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a poet.  That’s because the want ads are full of good full-time positions for poets.  Yeah, right.  Hey, I never said I got any smarter.  Anyway, I spent a lot of time studying literature.  It wasn’t long before I figured out that I would have to get a job teaching at a university if I wanted to write poetry seriously.  And my sister, a dean, told me that the best way to do that was to get my degree in linguistics since I could always get a job teaching English as a second language.  There was always a demand for ESL teachers.  The college that hired me would no doubt have me teach literature also.

So that’s what I did.  I majored in linguistics, while taking an equal number of units in literature.  In addition, I took an equal number of units in Spanish, because Bank of America (for whom I worked at the time) would pay for my college as long as I took Spanish classes.  This seemed good to me, since I had no other life at the time.  I finally graduated from college in 1985, and soon afterwards, saw an ad in the paper for Los Angeles Unified School District.  They needed elementary school teachers.

I thought, why not?  The pay was better than Bank of America—and there were fewer hours (all you teachers reading this can stop laughing any time now).  So I got a job teaching first grade in Wilmington.  It only took a year for me to figure out that this was what I was meant to do.  I felt with all my being that this was my place in the universe.  Maybe I could make the world a little better, one kid at a time, by helping kids make their dreams come true.  I gave up a fellowship at UCLA, got my clear teaching credential, and never looked back.  And I’m glad I did.  So I’m a teacher.  And I’ve been doing it a little while.  So let me tell you something about teaching.

A teacher is only worth a damn if that teacher knows and listens to his or her students.  They used to teach us in teacher school that all children want to learn.  Well, that’s a load of crap.  You remember school.  Did YOU want to learn long division?  It’s not completely untrue.  Children do want to learn.  They just don’t want to learn what we’re teaching.  In order to be a good teacher you have to get to know your students.  You have to learn what it is the student wants.  Then you have to help that student get it.

My wife used to take mandolin lessons.  She took lessons for a good two years.  And she never really got anywhere with it.  She did learn to play a little.  But she never made any progress.  And she always sounded like a beginner.  This is because her teacher (whom I admire very much, by the way) never listened to what she wanted.  What she wanted was to be able to play along with me when I played guitar.  She wanted to be able to chord along with me and sing.  What he gave her were mandolin solos written out for her in notation (standard TAB, for those who know).  Of course, she didn’t play the mandolin, so she thought he was doing the right thing.  But the solos didn’t really speak to what she wanted to do.  She practiced a little.  But she never made any progress.  She made little progress because she wasn’t moved to practice with all her heart.  It wasn’t fun.  So she didn’t put her heart in it.

Eventually, she gave up practicing.  She knew she wasn’t making any progress.  But she thought the problem was hers.  She didn’t know any better.  She didn’t know there was any other way to learn.  If she wasn’t learning, it had to be her fault.  And it wasn’t.

Now, had he given her some simple chord charts for songs she already knew and loved and showed her how to strum along, she would have gotten more excited about the whole thing, I’m sure.  And in time, no doubt, she would have asked to learn some of those mandolin solos he was pushing at her in the beginning.    The point is, there can be no set curriculum in any subject.  You have to see where the student is and what the student wants.

This brings me to kung fu.  It took a while, didn’t it?  I started to practice kung fu about the same time I started teaching for the school district.  And after about ten years, I became an instructor.  Back around 2001 or 2002, I injured myself again and had to take some time off from kung fu, but I’m back to teaching now.  And in those years I was away from the kung fu club, I learned that great secret about teaching.  Now I know why so many people who start kung fu, quit.

Most guys will tell you that it’s because kung fu is too hard, that most people can’t hack it.  That is not true.  People want to believe that because it means that if you’re still doing it, you must be some kind of elite superior person or something.  Nonsense.  If I can do it, anybody can do it.  That’s the simple truth.  The reason most people quit is because we, the kung fu teachers, are not listening to them.

For example, some really just want a form of exercise that isn’t boring.  Exercise bikes and elliptical machines just don’t do it for them.  And they hate jogging.  So they take kung fu.  They don’t really want to learn how to beat anybody up.  They are not expecting to have to defend themselves.  That’s why God made guns.  They just want to come into the club a few times a week and get a good workout.  So those teachers who spend their time trying to make sure these people do every movement absolutely perfectly are wasting their time and annoying the students.  They don’t care if they do the movements perfectly.  They don’t really care if they make any progress.  They just want to sweat.  The good teacher will leave those students alone and let them do their thing.

And then there are other students who really want to learn to fight.  They don’t want to learn any of the weapons, because nobody walks around with a spear or a broadsword anymore.  These folks want to learn self defense.  They don’t want to learn mysterious channeling of internal energy.  They don’t want to learn a lot of advanced forms or katas.  They just want to learn what to do if somebody tries to hurt them.

And then you have the students who, like  good catholics, love the art and tradition of the martial arts style.  They don’t plan on getting in any fights.  But they love the beauty of the movements.  They want to learn every form, every weapon, every technique, and they want to do it right.   These people could just as easily be civil war re-enactors.  They pay attention to every detail.

There are a few students who want to learn because they want to have power over others.  They study hard and try to be very good at what they do.  They want to become masters.  They want to become teachers.  I believe it is important to recognize these students and WEED THEM OUT.  No one who wants to have power over others should be taught a martial art.

I have always said that nobody who wants to be a leader should be allowed to be one.  Those people are only interested in power, and that’s not good for anybody.  All our leaders should be like Cincinattus.  They should step in, do their job and lead, and then get the hell out and go back to their farms.  The only people worth being leaders are the people who don’t want to lead.  And maybe it’s the same with teachers.

I never wanted to be a teacher.  It just happened.  I certainly don’t go into work every day planning on teaching the kids.  No.  I go into work.  And it just so happens that there are some kids in front of me who don’t know what nouns are.  So I show them.  And they learn.  And the ones who want more, I give it to them.  And the others, I give what they need.  And in the meantime, we try to have as much fun as we can.  I never wanted to be a teacher.  It’s a difficult job.  But somebody has to do it.