“Your job is just wiping kids’ asses; real teaching happens in university.”

The life before

“Why did you want to become a teacher?”

This question has been asked multiple times when a fresh, blue-eyed intern enters my classroom. I always answer, “I didn’t want to. I hated it.” 

After receiving their stunned expression, I tell them a story. 

Easy money

My previous teacher had a burnout, and she wanted to talk with me. I met her in the classroom where she was teaching with earmuffs on. 

• I can’t take it anymore. The sound feels like cutting my brain. Could you please take care of my students for a while before I hang them? 
• I’m not interested. I don’t want to teach. 
• Hey, you’re studying, and I bet you need some easy money. It’s only for a week or two. 
• I want to be a musician, not a teacher. 
• Easy money, and you can’t even make that big disaster? 
• Okay, fine. Why not. I need the money. 

I hated those two weeks. I didn’t understand why the students were so stupid and didn’t get things in the blink of an eye, and I certainly didn’t understand why I promised to take a couple of students and start teaching regularly. I felt that I was the stupidest person in this story. 

Weeks passed, and I started to ponder why they just didn’t take the violin bow and make a sound. I stared at the bow and tried to remember how I had learned it at the age of five, but I couldn’t. 

Then grabbed the bow and thought about how many steps it actually takes to set fingers as they should be and what would happen if I didn’t hold it correctly. I was shocked. There were more than a dozen detailed things to do, and I was thinking of just the fingers. On top of that, I needed to multiply that by three because of the different positions where your bow can be; I was speechless.  How can a five-year-old learn all this in a 30-minute lesson? How will I explain this to a student who has lost left and right? The names of the fingers are still not there yet, and my sticker collection is more interesting than my educational message. I didn’t know, but I planned to do something about it. 

I made a plan, and I put it into action right away. I camouflaged technical parts with stories and frustrating repetitions into games. My 5-year-old student’s eyes twinkled like little stars, and the sticker collection wasn’t that appealing because I had a violin show going on live. I started to understand why I felt like I did in the beginning. My frustration was camouflaged into hating. I didn’t know what I was doing, which I hated, not teaching.

 All my first mistakes and breakthroughs happened with this lovely 5-year-old student.  I taught her for 12 years until she graduated from high school and decided to focus on becoming a doctor. We still email each other, and nowadays, she sends pictures of her children. 

This student taught me that you can´t teach without connecting emotionally because that´s what teaching is: connection. I also understood that you need to be authentic to get the connection. Teaching happens through your personality, and acting doesn’t work even though you are an artist in your classroom, a creative one-man show. Most of all, you need a plan and a script, but like in life, you need to improvise because things won’t always go according to plan. I fell in love with teaching, and this relationship has been the longest I have ever had or will be. 

I hate you

“I hate you! I hate school and this fucking classroom! Go away bitch!”

It was one of my first days in a new school, and I had an issue with students who weren´t used to doing things they didn´t want to do. No seemed to be a word like I had thrown a bucked holy water on little devils, and now they were hiding from the acids of learning under the tables, escaping from the classroom, and others were using chairs and books as flying bullets to make holes in me.

They were trying to break the biggest obstacle on their way to becoming an even bigger problem for society, but no, it was a nice try, and after the first shock, it was pretty amusing. Unfortunately, there was no time to laugh, and I needed to stop this shit show by focusing on the biggest problem.

The classroom runaways will come back; it was freezing outside. Students under the table weren’t a problem, and MC ***** was not continuing the rapper’s delight. I decided to focus on the students throwing books and available stuff.

“Oh my God, poor you! I am so so sorry! Please, everyone, help. I need help!”

Total silence surrounded me, and stunned eyes were trying to find blood, broken limbs, a dying person or similar because the tone in my voice was severe. “I need a plaster and fast; please give me the box.” The students were looking at me as if I was injured, but no. They just didn’t understand who the victim was or where the emergency was. Even the students who escaped from the classroom returned to see what happened. 

There was I in the middle of the students, and I was putting a plaster on a book that was thrown in this shit show. “I´m so sorry. You didn´t do anything, and now you´re hurt.” I was talking gently to the math book and added another plaster. The students didn’t know what to think. Was I out of my mind, weirdo or was it serious that the math book was injured? I could almost hear their brains trying to adjust to another setting. This silence sounded nice because it was the sound of learning.

 “You can fix the pages with tape.” Said one student.

 “Yeah, just tape it, you know. It’s okay; I can show you,” another student said.

 “I can show you where the tape is!” Said another student.

It’s kind of good it was just a math book. No offence.

There was me. In the middle of a classroom of students trying to fix the math book, the thrower silently picked up other thrown stuff, and the escapees were lifting chairs and tables. I didn’t need to do anything because they kept on learning something. “Think if this would have hit someone, you know, someone. It’s kind of good; it was just a math book. no offence.” Nodding or other ways to agree with that comment was around the classroom. 

After weeks, this book thrower started doing his math homework, and his favourite joke was fooling me into thinking he hadn’t done it. The class clapped him every time he did the homework, and we were all proud of him. The table and chair throwers graduated from the class, but every time something happened at school, our class was the first place where they came to talk about it.

The MC ***** spent a moment or two with me after school by rapping the words he likes to use in the classroom.  I guess he didn’t like the materials and stopped using them after a few days. We stopped having battle rap, and now he’s in charge of writing the daily schedule on the board and reading it every morning.

The escaper gave me the challenge occasionally, but every Friday before going home, he hugged me, a tight one that would carry through the weekend for both of us. 

I taught these students that a reliable adult sets boundaries, and that’s love and caring. My frustration at the beginning of my teaching years made me understand the student’s behaviour. Frustration comes with things they don´t understand. Asking for help should be a skill to be proud of. 

They taught me that students are never ready. The future needs to be shown bright to them. If they can’t see it, why would they keep walking forward?  If a teacher can give only one thing: give enthusiasm, the Sun will rise on a lifelong learning path.

The chickens can come in different forms

”Teacher, teacher! The chickens have escaped! They are on the road!” the students said. 

“Come to the kitchen at once!” Said the boss. 

I decided to shut down the curtains first because one chicken was already flat, and the others tried to learn from that example with their chicken brains. I ran to the kitchen and noticed a large foam ball expanding rapidly from the dishwasher. 

“There were no dishwasher tablets, so I put Fairy instead.” Our lunch should have started minutes ago, and we could only offer foam balls. Students were shouting and crying because the McNugget was flat, and eyes all around me, big as plates, asked for a solution. 

We had a taco day, and the Capture the Real Chicken game was a perfect appetiser. In science class, the circle of life was explained with a real example, and the miracles of using Fairy dishwasher soap had a performance in our kitchen—another typical day in our exceptional school. 

I remember it like yesterday when I started in this school. There was only one week before the academic year began, and everything, I mean everything, was not in order.

Hey, come here! I have a surprise for all of you!

We thought that maybe something related to school was in order—maybe books, a working internet connection or even a cartridge for the printer. Instead, we saw a box in the middle of an office, and he asked us to open it. We approached the box and opened it. It was full of chicks. The God damn chicks! The owner was full of ideas for establishing a small animal farm, and the students could participate in taking care of them. 

At that moment, the best team of teachers was established. I have never before worked with personalities that I respect and cherish with my whole heart. We all had different ways of teaching but shared the same vision of education.

In the following years, I learned that chickens can come in different forms and that life-long friendships can be found where you don’t just work; you live it. 

Extra special stickers

It was a normal day at music school, and another student had beautifully finished one of the pieces she was working on. It was time to pick a new one, and I played both options. I  asked her to pick one she liked, but she stared at the music sheets and me. I wondered why it took so long for her to choose because she usually knows right away. I gently asked her if she didn’t like the options, “It’s okay.  I could find other ones.”

She suddenly started to cry, and I softly comforted her and tried to ask what was the matter. 

• I can put the songs away, no worries. If you don`t like these, it’s fine.
• No! Don’t put them away!! Why do I have to choose? I don’t want to!
• It’s fine. I can choose if you don’t know what to start playing.
• No! You don’t choose! And she cried even more. I just hugged her, and she finally murmured something. 

• I can’t, I don’t want to choose…I love both of them, but they say I need to choose. 
• What do you mean, lovely one? 
• Mum or Dad. They are not together anymore, and now I need to choose. 
• No, no. You don’t need to do that between mom and dad—you can have them both!
• But they are not together anymore. Not in the same home!
• I know that, but hey, can you play two good songs at the same time?
• No…
• Exactly. Not at the same time, but you can play both. You just choose which one first! Then, after playing the first one, you can play the other one. Whenever you have finished the song, there’s a perfect one waiting for you. I think it’s even better that you have two!
• Really? 
• Yes! You don’t have to choose. You can have them both! Not just at the same time. 

That violin lesson ended with a smile and two music sheets with extra special stickers. 

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The Big bad wolf

I have heard stories of divorces, loss of loved ones, heartbreaks, serious moments of life, and also stories about breakthroughs. I have been asked to go on a playdate and birthdays. Now, I have been teaching for 23 years, and I still aim to end the lessons with a smile and extra special stickers. The students and new ones keep coming, but I might be the only safe adult or the only 4th-grade teacher to the students in their whole lives. 

They can’t choose who their teacher is, so it is better to keep on learning to be good human being and help them build a solid foundation on how to understand and see themselves as a learner in a positive way. Then they can add the bricks of knowledge in the following years, and it will last even though the big bad wolf called life tries to huff and puff.

We had dinner after a long day of work, and the life before was sharing the day. I was too about my day with the lovely ones, but again, like so many times before, there was zero interest. This time, the dinner was an important one because he gave me an explanation after all these years. 

• No offence, but your job is just wiping kids’ asses. The real teaching happens in university. 

It has been two years since we had this conversation. It’s shocking how unattractive a person becomes once you learn the lesson. He tried to huff and puff, but it was just another brick in the wall.