Back in the 1980’s I was given the gift of teaching the Chapter I program students in English. This was done because Mrs. Soulwhipple was not only a veteran English teacher, but also the superintendent’s wife. She was the one gifted with all the star kids, the A & B students, the ones that would be identified as the proper kids to put into our nascent Gifted and Talented Program. That meant that I would get all the kids that were C, D, & F in most of their classes, the losers, the Special Edwards, the learning disabled, the hyper rocketeers of classroom comedy, and the trouble makers. And I was given this gift because, not only was I not a principal’s or superintendent’s wife, but I actually learned how to do it and became good at it. How did I do that, you might ask? I cheated. I snooped into the Gifted and Talented teacher training, learned how to differentiate instruction for the super-nerd brain, and then used the stolen information to write curriculum and design activities for all my little deadheads (and they didn’t even know who the Grateful Dead were, so that’s obviously not what I meant). I treated the little buggers like they were all GT students. Voila! If you tell a kid they are talented, smart, and worthy of accelerated instruction… the little fools believe it, and that is what they become.
Even the goofy teacher is capable of believing the opposite of what is obvious and starts treating them like super-nerds because he actually believes it. I soon had kids that couldn’t read, but were proud of their abstract problem-solving skills. I had kids that could enhance the learning of others with their drawing skills, their singing ability, and their sense of what is right and what is wrong. I had them doing things that made them not only better students for me, but in all their classes. And I did not keep the methods to my madness a secret, either. I got so good at coercing other teachers to try new ideas and methods that I got roped into presenting some of the in-service training that all Texas teachers are required by law to do. And unlike so many other boring sessions we all sat through, I presented things I was doing in the actual classroom that other teachers could also use with success. The other teachers tried my activities and sometimes made them work better than I did.
Yes, I know this all sounds like bragging. And I guess it probably is. But it worked. My kids kept getting better on the standardized tests and the State tests that Texas education loves so much. And Mrs. Soulwhipple was still the superintendent’s wife, but she did not stay a teacher forever. She eventually went to a new school district with her husband. And guess who they started thinking of when the question of who would be the next teacher for the nerd classes was considered. That’s right, little ol’ Reluctant Rabbit… that goofy man who drew pictures on the board and made kids read like a reading-fiend… me.
So, a new era began in Cotulla. In addition to still getting to teach all the deadheads (because they weren’t going to trust those precious children to anyone else, naturally), I began teaching at least one edition of Mr. B’s famous Nerd Class every school year. We actually assigned long novels and great pieces of literature for the kids to read and discuss and study in depth. Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt were read. We began talking about “big ideas”, “connections to the wider world”, and how “things always change”. We began taking on ideas like making our world better and how to help our community. Kids began to think they were learning things that were important. We did special units on Exploring Our Solar System, The World of Mark Twain, Finding the Titanic, and The Tragedy of Native American History. And we spent as much as a third of the year on each. I am myself cursed with a high IQ and a very disturbing amount of intelligence. I am the deepest living stockpile of useless facts and trivia that most of my students would ever meet in their lifetimes. And even I was challenged by some of the learning we took on. That’s the kind of thing that makes a teaching career fun. It kept me teaching and meeting new students and new challenges long after my health issues made it a little less than sensible to keep going. And if I manage to tell you a few Nerd Class stories in the near future, then at least you stand a chance of knowing a little bit about what-the-heck I am talking about. So be prepared for the worst. I am retired now, and have plenty of time for long-winded stories about being a teacher.
During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi. I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious clay-mation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.
Catch a Falling Star 
Why School Should Be Cool
I was a school teacher for thirty-one years, and in spite of the immense amount of brain damage that builds up over time, especially as a middle-school teacher, I think I know what we’ve been doing wrong.
We need to take a look at an education system where things are working better than they are here.
Now, I know you probably didn’t click on the boring video about school. Heck, you probably aren’t even reading this sentence. But I can summarize it and put it in easy-to-understand words. Finland does not have to educate as many poor and disadvantaged kids as this country does. The video gives five ways that Finland does it better, but all of them boil down to the basic notion that the country is more homogeneous and uniformly middle-class than ours is. Still, we can learn things from them.
The first of the five ways that Finland does it better is a difference in government. While U.S. governmental safety-net programs blame people who need food stamps for being lazy (even though some of them work 40-hour work weeks in minimum-wage jobs), Finland gives a huge package to parents of everything they might need as soon as their child is born. As long as the child is in school, the government does many things to support the family’s efforts to educate them. Imagine what we could accomplish here if we invested some of the vast fortune we give to corporations in subsidies into educating poor black and Hispanic children instead. Children have a hard time learning in school when they come to school hungry. If we could only feed them better, the way the Fins do, we would revolutionize our classrooms.
The second point the video makes is the biggest suds-maker every time I get on my teacher’s soap box. They don’t give kids homework and they only give them one standardized test when they leave high school. I have recently covered this topic more thoroughly in a post in which I was able to ridicule Florida governor Rick “Skeletor” Scott. (Boy, did I enjoy doing that.) But I won’t go into all of that again here.
The third thing is respecting teachers. In Finland they treat teachers with the kind of respect that they give to doctors and lawyers. How cool is that? In Texas, calling someone a teacher is an epithet. If a teacher is liked or even loved by their students, administrators are encouraged to keep a closer eye on them to figure out what’s wrong. Students are supposed to hate their teachers and sit all day filling out mind-numbing test-preparation worksheets. Imagine what it could be like if teachers weren’t the scum of the earth. They might actually have students convinced that learning goes on in their classrooms.
The fourth point is that Finland does not try to cram more and more memorized details into young brains so they can spit it all back out on a test. They take students thoroughly into the subject of study, and at a slower, easier pace. They dive deep into the river of learning instead of wade through the wide and shallow parts. All questions get answered. And by that, I mean, student questions, not teacher questions. The learning is student-centered.
Finally, the video states that Finland simply has fewer social ills in their country to get in the way of good quality education. But even though the work is harder in this country, the potential is really there to go far beyond what Finland is capable of. We have a natural resource that is totally untapped in this nation. We don’t develop the minds of a majority of our children in any meaningful way. And I can tell you from having done it, you can teach a poor or disadvantaged child to think. You can give them the tools for academic, economic, and personal success. You can make them into valuable human beings. But you should never forget, they are already precious beyond measure. We just ignore and trash that inherent value. So, the information is out there about how to do a better job of educating our children. We need to follow through.
Here endeth the lesson.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, education, humor, insight, teaching
Tagged as education, Finland's education system, humor, lessons learned, teaching, teaching better