My former students occupy such important spaces in my life

There have been so many unexpected benefits to my teaching career, but none have been more surprising than the lifelong relationships that I have established with so many of my students.

I first got to know these people as seven or eight or ten year-old children, and so many of them are now adults who occupy such an important space in my life.

My wife posted this on Facebook last night about one of those former students:

“Kate, babysitter extraordinaire and former student of Matt (grade 3) and mine (grade 5) just sang a lullaby over speaker phone to Charlie who wouldn’t go to bed without hearing a song that only she knows. Can I just tell you how special it was for me to hear a kid (well, not anymore) who I taught 12 years ago when she was ten sing my little one to sleep? (The answer is: pretty damn special.) Kate, thank you for making Charlie’s and my night.”

— Elysha Dicks

Not every teacher chooses to forge such close ties with their former students, but I can't for the life of me understand why.

When you're transmitting information to an audience, be entertaining. Even if it's simply a sign.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith argues that every time you are speaking to a group of people of any size, you have an obligation to be entertaining. 

I could not agree more. Whether it's a staff meeting or professional development or a sales conference, you have a duty to engage and amuse your audience while transmitting the necessary information.     

I think this rule can also be applied in other types of communication as well. Cleverly designed 404 pages that delight the reader and amusing road signs are two examples of opportunities to stand above the crowd and entertain your audience while also transferring the necessary information. 

Here is another example of a sign that we see all the time, except in this case, it has been brilliantly written to delight its audience:

How to annoy a child

As an elementary school teacher for the last 17 years, I have learned many ways to annoy a child. Here are just a few:   

1. If asked, declare that you have no favorite number.
2. If asked, declare that you have no favorite color.
3. Refuse to divulge your own middle name.
4. Ask a child how many fingers he or she has. When the child says ten, point out that he or she only has eight because two of their digits are thumbs. Then seriously question the child's intelligence. 
5. Say popular catch phrases in the most robotic and uninspired way possible while pretending like you are trying your best to say the phrase properly.
6. Explain that the unicorn is not an imaginary animal but an extinct animal. Use the existence of the narwhal, the rhino, and all other horned land animals to support your assertion. 

For the record, I have no favorite number or color. 

I have a middle name but often provide children with a false name.

And I have convinced dozens of children that unicorns were once real before laughing at their naivety. 

Why was this second grader drinking a beer, and why did I allow it?

When I entered teaching 17 years ago, I expected to the job to bring many benefits to my life:

Work that I loved. 
Stable employment.
Summer vacations.
A career that afforded me the opportunity to make a real difference in the world 

I taught second grade that first year. I had a class of 20 students. One of them was a little girl named Allison. She wore a purple Gap sweatshirt for most of the year. She was kind, shy, slightly under-confident, and liked to laugh. 

That's her, just to my left, smiling.

When I was moved to third grade the next year, Allison was assigned to my class again. She brought that same purple sweatshirt with her, along with a little less shyness and a little more confidence. 

On Sunday, that seven year-old was somehow standing beside me at her college graduation party, drinking a beer and talking to me about her upcoming trip to Europe. She's a 23 year-old woman now, and she's also in my house about once a week, babysitting my children, taking care of my pets, or stopping by to say hello. When we arrived at the party on Sunday, my children saw Allison standing in her backyard, screamed her name, and ran into her arms. 

That little second grader is now my friend and a member of our family. 

I had no idea that this would be one of the many benefits of teaching when I started my career.

And Allison is not the only former student in my life who has become my friend. My former students are constantly occupying spaces in my life. They attend my author talks. We chat via email and social media. They seek my advice. They visit with me after school, wandering through a classroom that looks microscopic to them today. They are my babysitters. They read the rough drafts of my novels. Two of them attended my wife's surprise birthday party earlier this year. 

Five years ago, as Allison's class was preparing to graduate high school, I took the stage to introduce my class's annual Shakespearean production and was greeted by six of my students from that first class, all sitting together, waiting to watch us perform Julius Caesar, a play they had performed ten years earlier as second graders.

It was one of those moments as a teacher that I will never forget. 

Job security is a wonderful thing. My summers are a treasure. The opportunity to do a job I love and that brings real difference to the world is more than anyone could ask for from a career.

But the friendships that I have developed with former students like Allison are an unexpected blessing that mean as much to me as any other benefit from teaching.  

31 lessons I teach my students that aren’t in the curriculum

Never, ever ask a woman if she is pregnant.

Old people look weird but have lots and lots of good stuff to say.

“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I won’t do that again,” is always the best first response to any trouble you may be in.

The people who make their dreams come true are the people who work the hardest. Talent means little.

Good listeners are the most beloved people on the planet.

Fight with your feet. If someone hits you, run. You never know what that person might have in his or her pocket.

Never, ever download a videogame on your mobile phone.

Most people settle for a career rather than chasing their passion and end up living lives of quiet desperation. Promise yourself that you won’t let this happen to you.

Remember that almost every disaster will be meaningless in a year. Maybe a week. 

The unexpected thank you note is the best kind of thank you note.

The weird ones are the interesting ones.

Befriend people who are smarter than you.

Make sure that your bathing suit is securely fastened to your body before jumping off a diving board.

You care about what you look like. No one else does. Truly. 

Wear deodorant everyday.

Always record video with your mobile phone in the horizontal position.

Never, ever tell a person who asks you how to spell a word to look it up in the dictionary. There is no stupider way to find the spelling of a word.

Never, ever allow a person to sit alone in the cafeteria at lunch.

Don’t be “too cool” to sing, dance, or participate in gym class.  

If you learn to speak extemporaneously to an audience, you will have a skill that almost every other person on the planet does not.

Shakespeare isn’t as hard as people want you to believe.  

If you want something, fight for it in writing.

Always help your family with dinner. Cook, set the table, or clean up afterwards. Work for your food. 

Winners arrive on time. Losers are always unexpectedly stuck in traffic.

Any chore that takes two minutes or less should be done immediately. Dishes in the sink should never be a thing.

The single greatest thing you can do to guarantee your future success is to read a lot. Read more than everyone else.

Don’t ever expect life to be fair.

Complain less than the people around you. If possible, don’t complain at all.

Nothing good ever comes from watching reality television.

Drop mean friends instantly. There are too many people in this world to waste your time with a selfish jerk face.

Visit your former teachers often.

If the teacher tells you that your child is not gifted, it’s more likely that it’s the teacher who is not gifted.

The most common response to a piece I wrote last month entitled 12 Things Teachers Think But Can’t Always Say to Parents was a suggested addition to the list. It was phrased in many ways, oftentimes sarcastically, and it generally went something like this:

Your child is not as gifted as you think he or she is.

There was a reason I left this particular item off my list:

It’s stupid. It’s shortsighted and narrow minded. It’s unproductive. It’s adversarial. It’s not true.

This is not to say that I haven’t heard this sentiment expressed many times in my 17 years as a teacher. But whenever I hear a teacher express this idea, I push back immediately, and I push back hard, for three reasons.

1. Parents are supposed to think that their child is gifted.

It’s only natural for them to think more highly of their child than the rest of the world does. Their child is the most important thing in their life. They will invest more time, money, and energy into their child than anyone or anything before or after. It makes sense for them to believe that the person who they love the most in the world is gifted in some way.

And we all deserve to have someone in our lives who believes in us above all others. It should be our parents. They should be our champions. To think that parents should feel differently is short sighted and stupid.

2. Wouldn’t it be a better world if every teacher thought like parents and assumed that every student in their class was gifted in some way?

I’ve taught about 350 students in my 17 years as a teacher, and I have yet to meet a kid who I didn’t believe was gifted in one way or another.

In fact, some of my most accomplished students were the ones for whom learning came the hardest. Their gift was not intellect but effort -  a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed.

Give me a student gifted in effort over a student gifted in intellect any day. 

I assume that every one of my students is gifted, and this assumption has served me well. When a teacher sets remarkably high expectations and demands more from his students than ever before, students perform better. The research on this is irrefutable. 

Yet history is littered with presumptuous, ignorant,  and arrogant educators who assumed that their students wouldn’t amount to much and were later proven wrong.

Albert Einstein. Helen Keller. Robert Strenberg. Thomas Edison. Louis Pasteur. Enrico Caruso. Ludwig Beethoven. Leo Tolstoy. Louisa May Alcott.

     

Many more. Too numerous to count. Myself included.  

Each of these men and women were told by teachers that they were hopeless, half-witted, and doomed to a lives of mediocrity.

It turns out that it was the teachers who were hopeless, half-witted, and mediocre.

As a teacher, why not err on the side of gifted? Why not assume the best? Expect the best. Demand the best. Give students the chance to shine by assuming that they can and will shine.   

3. Why promote an adversarial relationship with parents?

If a parent thinks that their child is gifted, and you – for whatever reason – disagree, why not find some middle ground?

Yes, it’s entirely possible that your child is gifted, and if he begins working to his fullest potential, we may start to see more evidence of that. Let’s find a way to make that happen.

There’s no reason to quash a parent’s hopes and dreams for their child. The teacher-parent relationship is one of the best tools available in my teaching arsenal. When it is strong and trusting, learning increases. Behavior improves. But that relationship only exists because I understand how parents feel about their children, and I embrace those feelings.  

Yes, your child is gifted. I’m not sure about the scope of that giftedness, but let’s get your child working as hard as possible and find out together.

That strikes me as a more productive and respectful position than the smarmy “You’re child isn’t as gifted as you think” response that so many teachers who responded to my initial piece seemed to default to.  

Every child in my classroom is someone else’s whole world. I try to remember this at all times. When I do, it’s never too hard to see every child in my classroom as gifted in some way.

Teachers of writing at any level: Read this immediately. Nothing is more important.

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Patrick Modiano, who had this to say about the writing process during his acceptance speech:

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.

Similarly, here are some other comments on the writing process from a variety of accomplished and respected authors:

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
~E. L. Doctorow

Start before you’re ready. ~Steven Pressfield

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
~ William Faulkner

There are hundreds more like this.

Why do I bring this up?

In hopes that all of the teachers who require students to complete graphic organizers or planning sheets or move little pencils across bulletin board displays of the writing process or force their students to work on one piece at a time or assign their students specific topics for their writing assignments will knock it off and learn to write themselves instead of subjecting their students to their bizarre, inaccurate, nonproductive, and likely damaging perceptions of the writing process.

This is not to say that organization and planning should never be used when writing. About half the writers of the world plan in some way. Mystery, historical fiction, and many nonfiction writers plan their stories with great detail before they begin writing, but not all, and even when they plan, this process is often as amorphous and convoluted as the writing process itself. Rarely does it fit into little boxes and pocket charts. 

If you are teaching writing but not writing yourself on a regular basis, you are probably – no, definitely – doing more harm than good. Your ignorance of the writing process – coupled with the way you teach it – is turning out ineffective, uninspired, under confident writers.

You have made the ability to write well and love writing a rare commodity. You have made people like me more singular and valuable than we should be.

The writing process is not some finely delineated series of steps. It is not a codified system of applying words to the page. It does not adhere to structure or schedule or graphic representation. It is none of these things.

If you teach writing to students of any age, my advice is simple:

Write.  

Write. Write. Write. Learn about the process that you are teaching instead of making bizarre and wildly inaccurate assumptions about it or replicating the terrible instruction that you received long ago that never actually turned you into someone who loves to write or you would already be writing and wouldn’t be forcing students to do such ridiculous things.

Just write.   

See how often you use a graphic organizer.

See how much you appreciate being assigned a specific topic.

See how productive you think it is moving a little paper pencil across a bulletin board from one facet of the writing process to another.

See how much you value the notion of prewriting.

See how un-delineated things like writing and revising and editing are. See how amorphous and undefined the writing process is, and how stupid stupid stupid it is to force students to work on one of these parts of the writing process and not another.

Please. Just write.

Either that or your choice is simple:

Stop teaching writing altogether. You’re doing more harm than good. Just let your students write, absent any instruction or interruption. Sit at the back of the classroom and read. Or eat a sandwich. Or take a nap.

Your students have a far greater chance of leaving your classroom loving to write than if you open your uninformed mouth and do all the ridiculous things that non-writers think belong in the instruction of writing.

The Joyful and Effective Use of Condoms in the Latter Years of Life: My latest workshop

I’m hired from time to time to deliver talks and teach workshops on a  variety of topics. I’ve delivered inspirational speeches. Commencement addresses. I’ve hosted conferences and story slams. I’ve taught workshops on storytelling, teaching, writing, personal productivity, and more. And while I’m hardly an expert on anything in particular, I’ve always felt that if given the time, I can be effective on almost any topic. 

The toughest talk I ever delivered was the inspirational address at the end of a policy conference on human trafficking.

It turned out well, but I was not without some trepidation. 

Last night, I dreamt that I had arrived at a weekend retreat, thinking that I would be speaking about the effective use of storytelling in the classroom.

Instead, I discovered that I had been mistakenly assigned a six hour workshop entitled:

‘The Joyful and Effective Use of Condoms in the Latter Years of Life”

Rather than panicking or attempting to correct the mistake, I spent the rest of the dream planning my presentation, finding ways to fill all six hours of the scheduled workshop with informative, entertaining, and persuasive material about condom use in the latter years.  

And by the end of the dream, it was done. Ready to go. And it was good.

I’m a little disappointed that I won’t ever be able to put my plan into action.

Unless, of course, you are a conference organizer and think ‘The Joyful and Effective Use of Condoms in the Latter Years of Life” would be a compelling offering.

If that’s the case, call me. I’m ready to go.

A student wrote something that made me cry while reading it aloud. And thanks to the rules of my “Make your teacher cry” contest, my tears were caught on video.

For the past five years, I have offered a challenge to my fifth grade students:

Write something that makes me cry.

The contest was born from Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog, a book I once read to my students but no longer do because I always get weepy at the end.

There is nothing wrong with crying. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you read. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you have read many times before. 

But crying in front of two dozen merciless fifth graders?

Not good.

Rather than reading Love That Dog, I’ve challenged students to write something that will make me cry in the same way Sharon Creech’s story makes me cry.

Here is how the contest works:

If you write a piece for the contest, I will read it aloud to the class while the writer records my reading on video. If I cry or get weepy in any way during the reading, I agree to post the recording of the reading to YouTube with a caption of the student’s choice.

For five years, dozens of students have tried. All have failed.

Until now.

Here is a recording of me, reading Julia’s piece aloud. Unlike previous contestants, Julia decided to write memoir rather than fiction. Clever girl. And in my defense, Julia begins weeping in the middle of my reading, which may or may not have contributed to my tears as well.

Regardless, I got weepy, so Julia wins. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, so she deserves the glory that comes with her victory. Enjoy.

12 Things Teachers Wish They Could Say to Parents

Parent-teacher conferences begin for me this week. I will sit down with parents and students and discuss academic progress, effort, behavior, and the students’ prospective futures in middle school and beyond.

I like parent-teacher conferences. I have excellent relationships with the vast majority of my parents over the years, and in some ways, the parents of my former students once saved my career.

Nevertheless, if I could, this is what I wish I could say to parents during my upcoming parent-teacher conferences. While these 12 things pertain specifically to me, I strongly suspect that they will also pertain to most teachers as well.
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1. I love your child just a notch below my own children. Truly. And oddly, that love kicks in almost immediately, just like it did with my kids.

2. I will miss your child for the rest of my life. Even if your child was incredibly difficult and made my days long and exhausting at times.

3. My primary goal as a teacher is to make my students and the parents of my students happy with my performance. Students and parents are both my customers and my bosses (though I’d never let my students know this). If you are happy, then my administrators will also be satisfied with my job performance. If they are not, something is wrong with my administrators, and their opinions will matter very little to me.

4. You are so very wrong if you view our relationship as adversarial in any way.

5. When I ask you to call me by my first name, it’s because I want to have the kind of relationship with you that requires first names. There is no need for artificial barriers in our relationship. We are two adults who both love your child. Why would we not be on a first name basis?

6. Some of my closest friends (and the godparents of my children) are the parents of former students. These relationships developed because we treated each other as equal partners in their child’s education. If you and I are doing our jobs well, we should be friendly, if not actual friends, by the end of the school year.

7. There is nothing wrong with questioning my decision. I only ask that you don’t question my intent. Know that I am always trying to do my best on behalf of your child, and that despite my best intentions, mistakes will be made.

8. If I have done something that disappoints or upsets you, always come to me first. You can’t imagine how hurt I am when I hear about your feelings secondhand, either from an administrator or (even worse) through the parent, teacher, or student rumor mill.

9. The single greatest lesson that I have learned in my 16 years of teaching is the importance of follow through. Always do what you say you will do, and never make a threat or a promise that you cannot make happen. This is given me a hard earned reputation with students and has allowed me to be as successful as I have been. It’s a lesson I have brought into parenting, and it also serves me (an my children) well. It’s the one parenting piece of advice that I pass onto you. 

10. Please know that both legally and ethically, there are times when I want to say something or agree with you but cannot for a multitude of reasons, usually pertaining to the privacy of another student. It’s frustrating for me, and I’m sure it is for you, but it’s also my professional responsibility.

11. A lower-than-desired grade on a report card is only my honest assessment of your child’s performance and not an indictment of your parenting or your child’s potential. It’s probably just an indicator that there is room for improvement. 

12. I will wonder (and worry) about your child’s future for the rest of my life.

Less lecture. More learning.

In 2013, I did a TED Talk entitled “Speak Less. Expect More.”

Unfortunately, the audio engineer failed me that day, and the recording was poor. Although my voice is discernible in the video, the audio is of such low quality that the talk never received any real attention despite initial excitement by the organizers to the contrary.

I hope to repeat the talk someday at another conference so I can get the version that people can actually listen to. 

“Speak less. Expect more.” is a hard lesson for educators to learn. So many believe that teaching is about talking. Lectures. Stories. Delivering content and imparting wisdom to eager young minds.

We call these teachers “sages on the stage,” and even though they work incredibly hard and are no less dedicated to their students, they would be far more effective if they simply stopped talking and allowed their students to do more.

If you were to ask my students what my ultimately goal is as an educator, they would tell you that it’s to do nothing. My dream is to sit at my desk, reading a book, answering the occasional question, while the students run the classroom and guide their own learning.

It’s unrealistic, of course. Pie in the sky. Nevertheless, I’m working on it, and you would be shocked at the level of responsibility that students have in my classroom.

What I’ve discovered is that children are far more capable than we ever realize, and that letting go of as much responsibility and placing it squarely on the students’ shoulders is good for everyone, but especially the kids.  

I mention all of this because I read a quote by Stephen Fry recently that summarizes my belief and my TED Talk so well:

"Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars."

If I were king, I would have this quote placed above the door of every classroom – elementary through college – in America.

Four things to consider before dating a coworker: An office romance with my future wife.

Jackie Zimmerman of Time’s Money section writes about four things to consider before dating a coworker.

The last coworker who I dated was my wife. When we started dating back in March of 2004, she was teaching in a classroom one door down from mine. A friend and colleague now teaches in Elysha’s old classroom, and though Elysha’s been gone from that classroom for more than five years now, I still think of it as ‘Elysha’s room.”

I still leave school almost everyday through that classroom’s outer door, even though it often means going out of my way to do so. Before I push that door open and step out onto a wooden ramp, I always pause and purposefully recall something about those days long ago when Elysha and I worked together and spent so much of our time side by side.

I remember so I won’t forget. I remember because I was one of the best times of my life. I remember because it makes me smile every time even though is also often makes me sad, too.   

Some couples could never work together. Many couples, perhaps. Elysha and I loved working together. It made my days brighter and better. I’m always hopeful that someday, we may be able to work together again.

In reading through Zimmerman’s four suggestions, it looks like Elysha and I did well when we dated (and married) as coworkers.

1.  Avoid Getting Involved with the Wrong Person

Zimmerman’s suggestion pertains to dating people in positions higher up the corporate ladder. Though I always thought of Elysha as unattainable in every sense of the word, we were both teachers when we started dating, with no power over each other.  

2.  Know Your Company’s Policy Before the First Date

Before I dated Elysha, I had dated another colleague at the school and had already checked with my principal to be certain that there were no policies against it. He told me to make sure that if things didn’t work out, we ended our relationship amicably.

Not exactly a policy, but a good suggestion.

Thankfully, I have always been highly skilled at ending relationships. I’m friendly with almost all of my ex-girlfriends. In fact, the colleague who I dated before Elysha remains friends with me to this day, and in July, I will be the DJ at her wedding.

Still, I thought it was important to keep my principal informed when I was dating someone at work, so on April 1, 2004, as he crossed through the school auditorium, I told him that I was dating Elysha.

“Ha ha,” he said. “April Fools.”

“No, we’re really dating,” I said. “I’m serious.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, walking across the auditorium and out the door. “You and Elysha dating. Right.”

I have no idea when he realized that I wasn’t joking, but he was the person who married us two years later.   

3.  Consider the Worst-Case Scenario

Zimmerman suggests that you take careful stock of the person you are considering dating. If you break up, is this someone you can trust? Someone who you want potentially influencing your career? Could you still work together afterwards?

Honestly, this wasn’t even a consideration when Elysha and I began dating. She practically moved into my apartment immediately, and three months later, we had an apartment of our own.

Six months after that, we were engaged.

Even before we started dating, on one of those late night phone calls that people who are falling in love tend to have, she told me that if we ever started dating, she knew that we would never break up. 

A bold move, I thought at the time. And my heart soared.

I had also known Elysha for almost two years before we started dating. We began as colleagues and eventually became friends. Close friends. So I knew her well. I knew we would never break up, but I also knew that if the unthinkable happened. we could remain friends.   

4.  Remember that During Business Hours, Work Comes First

Despite one lunatic claim that this wasn’t the case, Elysha and I always took our jobs seriously and never placed our relationship ahead of our responsibilities. When you’re a teacher dealing with students and their futures, this is not hard to do.

That said, it doesn’t mean that our romance didn’t find ways into the workplace. I purchased her engagement ring online with a committee of fellow teachers after work one day in a first grade classroom. I plotted my proposal with a colleague in the office of our curriculum specialist. I was known to leave her notes on her desk during my lunch hour, and at least once, I sent three dozen roses to her classroom.

One dozen per hour for three hours.

We kept our relationship a secret from our students for quite a while, but one day, after Elysha’s students saw a fairly innocuous note from me on some chart paper, one of them asked, “Are you and Mr. Dicks dating?”

She admitted it. Happily. Over the course of a school year, your students become as close to you as any of your friends or family. At least that’s the way it’s always been for us. Letting them in on our secret was so much fun.

The fallacy of private criticism and the mistake teachers often make when assigning consequences

There is a phrase that has become popular in teaching:

Praise in public. Punish (or criticize) in private.

I think this depends upon a lot of factors, and especially the climate and culture of the classroom. If a teacher is adept at bringing the class together as one big family, or a particular class has come together on their own, then much more can be said in the open.

If there is trust and love in a classroom, then most things can be said out in the open.

It’s also important to remember that private rarely remains private. The notion if private is oftentimes a farce.

One of the biggest mistakes that teachers make is not allowing a student who they are reprimanding to maintain his or her dignity. Criticizing in public is often perfectly fine if the student does not feel isolation or shame in the process. Creativity, flexibility, and a willingness to subjugate one’s ego are often required in order to reprimand a student without losing that student’s trust and respect.

Consequences are important. Self esteem is, too.

In the unlikely event that my books, films, and musicals don’t make me a wealthy man, I have a back-up plan more than 350 people strong.

Theologian Adam Clarke once said:

“The old proverb about having too many irons in the fire is an abominable old lie. Have all in, shovel, tongs, and poker.”

I couldn’t agree more. I like to have as many irons in the fire as possible, hoping that one or more will eventually make me a rich man.

For the past 16 years, one of these “irons in the fire” has been to teach my students about how patronage worked hundreds of years ago. In those days, kings, popes, and wealthy landowners funded the lives of artists such as musicians, painters, poets, and sculptors so that they could focus solely on their creative endeavors.

Every school year, I explain to my students that someday, one or more of them may grow up and invent the next Internet, win the lottery, discover a vein of gold in their backyard, or make their fortune on Wall Street. And when that day happens, I want them to remember their former teacher, Mr. Dicks, toiling away in his elementary school classroom, probably still loving his job and his students but perhaps ready to take a break and write  fulltime.

I won’t need much. Just enough to support my family and live in relative ease and pleasure. A big house. A couple decent cars. Two or three vacations a year. Maybe a membership to a country club so I can play golf when I’m not hunched over the computer. 

I’m not asking for much.

In my 16 years of teaching, about 350 kids have passed through my classroom. The oldest of my students – second graders in 1999 – have graduated college and either begun their careers or gone onto graduate school.

Not quite old enough to have amassed great wealth, but not too far away either.

350 irons in the fire, just starting to get warm.

Poetry memorization need not be boring or a waste of time. I have used it to make a woman swoon (possibly) and enact one of my greatest pranks of all time against a fellow teacher.

Mike Chasar of Poetry Magazine writes about the lost art of poetry memorization. While it’s true that the academic demand to memorize poetry has all but disappeared from the American school system, I’m happy to report that this dying art remains alive and well in tiny corners of the world, including several of my own.

I took a poetry class in college with the late, great poet and professor Hugh Ogden, and he required us to have a newly memorized poem “of substance” ready for each class. 

“Of substance” meant that it had better not be four lines long.

We sat around a large, wooden table and recited our poems as our classmates listened on. Remarkably, Hugh had many of the poems that we recited committed to memory as well. He would close his eyes as we recited, almost as if he were listening to music and not the fumbling, occasionally inarticulate words of an nervous, undergraduate English major.

It was an incredibly difficult but incredibly rewarding expectation. I still have about half a dozen of those poems committed to memory, including Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” which I fell in love with through the process of memorization and still love today.
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Later, when I had students of my own –third graders and then fifth graders – I would require them to memorize at least one poem “of substance” each year. My students would grumble and complain about the requirement, but once they had the poem memorized and performed it on stage, they were happy to have done so.

Today, my students perform Shakespeare, and they memorize dozens and sometimes hundreds of lines with nary a complaint. And we still memorize our one poem of the year, myself included, in honor of Hugh.
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Years ago, in a time when Elysha and I still exchanged a present for every night of Hanukkah, I memorized Elysha’s favorite poem, William Blake’s  “The Tyger” and presented it as one of my gifts to her. With the poem committed to memory, I told Elysha that she had access to it at any time as long as we were together, and I would always recite to her on demand.

She loved the gift, or at least pretended to love it. And I can still recite the poem today, as can she.

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But my favorite moment of poetry memorization occurred about ten years ago when the teacher in the adjoining classroom began using the following call and response with his students:

Teacher: Oh Captain!
Students: My Captain!

I asked the teacher if he knew the Whitman poem that he was using – which I had memorize in college for Hugh and still have committed to memory to this day – and he did not. He had taken the idea from Dead Poet’s Society, the Robin William’s film about an English teacher at a boy’s boarding school in the 1960’s. 

I thought this rather unfortunate, so the next time he was absent from his classroom, I handed a copy of the poem to each of his students and asked them to begin memorizing it in secret. I explained that I would pop into their classroom whenever he was out to help them memorize the poem and rehearse, and one day, when they all knew the poem by heart, they would leap to their feet in the midst of the call and response, and instead of simply saying, “My Captain!” they would proceed to recite the entire poem to him.  

It finally happened on a morning in April. Since our classroom had an adjoining door and window, I was able to wait and listen for him to shout his first, “Oh Captain!” of the day. Then I watched as they all stood and recited the poem back to him. Shouted it back to him. 

In my memory, their recitation was universal and flawless. I suspect the truth was something not quite so cinematic. Still, it was amazing.

Had I been more familiar with the film at the time, I would’ve had them all stand on their desks. That would’ve been cinematic.

This guy is too damn young to be teaching.

A student from my very first class, way back in 1999, sent me this photo. It’s actually a screen grab from a video that they were watching.

It’s me, of course. I was probably 29 or 30 at the time. My first and only thought was this:

How could anyone hire someone so young to teach children?

What the hell was my principal thinking?

My students chose mustard covered bees.

My students sit in teams. Every month these teams change, and they are given the opportunity to choose new team names. This month one of the teams took the name Mustard Covered Bees.

The two things I’m allergic to.

 

The prize for my latest writing contest is the threat of tears and possible humiliation. No wonder my students are writing up a storm.

It’s that time of year again when I encourage my students to make me cry.

Parents and teachers often ask me about how my students so consistently fall in love with writing. The answer to this question could probably fill a book, but here is one tiny example:

Each week I sponsor one or more writing contests in my classroom. I choose the topics for these contests, and a panel of three independent, anonymous judges (usually teachers and former students) determine the winner. There is a standard prize for every contest, consisting of a certificate of achievement, a privilege of some kind for the following week, and the winner’s name added to a plaque of previous winners that is displayed in the classroom forever.

But sometimes I vary the prizes.

There was a time when I would read Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog to my students, but after finding myself unable to get through the final pages of the book a few years ago because I was in tears, I ask my students read it silently now.

Whenever I cry during the reading of a book, my kids never let me hear the end of it, so it is to be avoided whenever possible.

Inspired by the ending of Love That Dog, this week’s contest requires students to write a piece that will make me cry. Poem, story, song… whatever they want. 

Here are the rules: 

1. I agree to read every contest entry aloud to the class while being recorded to video. 
2. If I cry, get choked up, become verklempt, or produce even a single tear during the reading of the piece, I will post the video of my reading to YouTube with the title “Big Baby Grown Up Cries Like A Big Baby” and credit the student for his or her achievement.

In the four years that I have run this contest, no student has made me cry yet.

Since announcing this contest yesterday, the kids have been working feverishly. Some have even begun researching me online in order to find my “weak spot.”

This is one tiny example of why my students love to write:

I give them good reason to write. I make it profitable and fun.  

I have 15 jobs. So you probably require my services in one way or another.

As the New Year approaches and the endless possibilities of the coming year loom on the horizon, I always like to take a moment and reset my current occupational status, in the event that you or someone you know will require my services in 2015.

While occupations like teacher and writer seem like fairly obvious inclusions on the list, there are also several less obvious jobs on the list that may seem a little silly at first, but let me assure you that they are not.

Many people thought it was silly back in 1997 when my friend and I decided to become wedding DJs, even though we had no experience, equipment, or knowledge of the wedding industry whatsoever. We simply declared ourselves wedding DJs, bought a pile of equipment that we didn’t know how to use, and began the search for clients.

Nineteen years and more than 400 weddings later, we’re still in business.

The same could be said about my decision to become a minister in 2002. Or a life coach back in 2010. Or a professional best man in 2011. Or last year’s declaration that I was a public speaking coach. Or last week’s announcement that I am now a presentation consultant.

All of these positions have either become profitable ventures or at least received interest from potential clients.

The lesson: If you want to do something, just start doing it.  

So here is a list of my 14 current occupations and an explanation of my services. I hope I can be of service to you in 2015. 
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Teacher. Sorry. I’ve got a job teaching already, and I love it.

But in about four years, a partner and I plan on opening a one-room schoolhouse for students grades K-5, so if you’re looking for a school for your child at that time (or looking to donate money to build the school), contact me.

Writer: In addition to writing novels, I’ve also written a memoir, a book of essays, a rock opera, a tween musical, and a screenplay. I’m also the humor columnist for Seasons magazine.

     

I’m always looking for additional writing gigs, in particular a regular opinion column and/or advice column, so if you have a writing job in need of a good writer, contact me.

Wedding DJ: My partner and I are entering our 19th year in the business. We’ve have entertained at more than 400 weddings in that time. We’ve cut back on our business in recent years, ceasing to advertise or even maintain a respectable website. Almost all of our business these days comes through client or venue referrals, as we prefer.

If you’re getting married and need a DJ, contact me. 

Storyteller and public speaker: I deliver keynote addresses, inspirational speeches, and talks on a variety of subjects including education, writing, storytelling, productivity, and more. I’m represented by Macmillan Speakers Bureau.

I’m also a professional storyteller who has performed at more than 60 storytelling events in the last three years and has hosted story slams for literary festivals, colleges, and more. I’m a 15-time Moth StorySLAM champion and GrandSLAM champions whose stories have appeared on The Moth Radio Hour and This American Life.

If you need someone to entertain, inspire, inform, or emcee, contact me.  

Founder and producer of Speak Up: My wife and I produce a storytelling show called Speak Up. We are based in Hartford at Real Art Ways with additional shows at venues throughout the region, including local schools and The Mount in Lenox, MA.

If you have an audience that would be interested in storytelling, or you’re a storyteller looking to pitch a story for one of our shows, send an email to speakupstorytelling@gmail.com.

Minister: In the past ten years, I’ve married 13 couples and conducted baby naming ceremonies and baptisms. I’ll be marrying two more couples in 2015.

If you’re getting married and are in need of a minister, contact me. 

Life coach: In the past four years, I’ve worked with four different clients, assisting them in everything from goal setting to productivity to personal relationships to career development.

If you’re looking to make changes in your life and become a happier and more successful person, contact me.  

Tutor: I tutor students in grade K-12 on everything from general academics to college essay writing.

If you’re the parent of a student in need of academic support, either regularly or occasionally, contact me.

Storytelling and public speaking coach: For the past two years, I’ve been teaching storytelling workshops and coaching storytellers on an individual basis. People often take my workshops in hopes of performing in storytelling shows and competing in story slams, but they also take these workshops to improve job performance, enhance communication skills, and get their friends and family to finally listen to them.

My real mission is to eliminate the scourge of PowerPoint from this planet, one story at a time.

If you’d like to improve your storytelling, public speaking, and/or communication skills, send an email to speakupstorytelling@gmail.com and get on our mailing list. 

Writing camp coordinator and instructor: Last year my wife and I launched Writer’s Abroad, a four week long summer writing camp for students ages 11-16. We had an outstanding inaugural season and plan on an even better second year in 2015.

If you are the parent of a child ages 11-16 who loves to write and/or could benefit from four weeks of intensive writing instruction designed to improve skills and inspire writers, this camp may be for you. Contact me.

Presentation consultant: Since posting about this position a week ago, I have heard from two people who have expressed interest in hiring me for their fairly new companies at some point in the future. I may also have the opportunity to take on a partner in this business.

If you are a person who delivers content via meetings, presentations, workshops, etc. and would like to improve your communication skills, contact me.

Professional Best Man: Since posting about this position on this blog in 2011, four grooms and two reality television producers have inquired about hiring me for their weddings and television shows that are wedding related. Geographical constraints forced me to reject all their offers thus far. I am still awaiting my first gig.

Productivity consultant: Since posting about this position on this blog in 2013, I’ve had one inquiry about my services.

If you would like to become a more productive person in your personal or professional life and are willing to make changes in order to achieve this goal, contact me.

Professional double date companion: Since posting about this position on this blog in 2011, I have had no inquiries. That does not mean the job is a failure. Just that it has yet to succeed.

If you’re dating someone for the first time or have been on several dates and need that important second or third opinion on the person in question, contact me.

Professional gravesite visitor: Since posting about this position on this blog in 2011, I have had no inquiries. That does not mean the job is a failure. Just that it has yet to succeed.

If you have a gravesite in Connecticut in need of visiting, contact me.

No technology is a great way to teach. Also, PowerPoint is more than two decades old. It doesn’t count as technology anymore.

Rebecca Shuman of Slate writes about the benefits of a low technology classroom, despite complaints by some students that they are not being prepared for a world in which technology is a dominant an essential force.

"While exceptions exist, research shows again and again that when people are staring at a screen, or skip-jumping through a bajillion websites and apps, they are not learning well. Yes, college students are adults, and if they choose to spend class on whatever the new thing to replace Snapchat is, that’s their prerogative—but when it comes to course design, it is still the professor’s job to prioritize student learning."

I couldn’t agree more.

I teach storytelling to adults on a fairly regular basis, and recently, I conducted a series of workshops for teachers as part of an educational conference. In both instances, I was contacted by the conference facilitators and asked what my technology requirements were.

“None,” I said.

“Not even a PowerPoint?” one of the facilitators asked.

“Two things,” I said. “First, PowerPoint is 25 years old. It’s older than beepers and Viagra. It doesn’t count as technology anymore.”

“Okay…” she said.

“Second, after Ebola and ISIS, the next thing that we need to eradicate from this planet is PowerPoint.”

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In truth, there are times when I will utilize PowerPoint (and some of the other technology platforms that Shuman mentions in her piece) in my teaching, but only when it is absolutely necessary, which means almost never. Technology for technology’s sake makes no sense to me. Adding bells and whistles to something better done with pencil and paper only interferes with what is good and right about teaching.

Yet I see it all the time.

Besides, most PowerPoint presentations are so poorly designed and utilized so ineffectively that they do more harm than good.

I explain to my adult students that I want to engage them in dialogue and discourse. Make continuous eye contact. Utilize nonverbal signaling.

“Let’s spend the next hour nodding and smiling and furrowing our brows at one another,” I recently suggested to a group of students.

I want them to engage with me. Not my slides or my handouts.

I also understand the value of note taking. I know how it increases efficiency and effectiveness of learning. Just the act of writing down of a piece of information helps the learner retain that information, but note taking also forces learners to prioritize, organize, and systematize information as it’s being delivered.

All of this increases understanding and retention enormously.

So I tell my students that if they want to take notes, that’s great. Go for it. Sometimes I even talk about the benefits of note taking. But I also tell them at the end of my class or workshop, I would also be more than happy to send them my notes via email, thus releasing them from this burden as well.  

All I really want is for my students to listen, respond, question, and engage. Be fully present in the moment. Not staring at a screen or looking ahead on an agenda or flipping through a handout.

Just be with me for the short time we have together.

Perhaps it’s the storyteller in me. Since I teach through story almost continuously, my instinct is to find a way to engage my students and convey information and understanding through character, plot, humor, and an emotional appeal.

Nothing can ruin a good story faster and more completely than a PowerPoint presentation.

And based upon the feedback that I receive, both formally and informally, I am doing something right. I consistently receive high marks from my students, despite the absence of any material other than me and my voice.

I have never been asked to use more technology in my instruction.

I have never been asked to hand out notes, outlines, or even an agenda beforehand.

My workshops are always well attended, and students actively participate throughout.

It’s old school. Even older than PowerPoint. It’s one person who knows some stuff imparting his wisdom upon a group of people who don’t know that same stuff or don’t know it was well.

It’s stories and anecdotes. Questions and answers. Call and response.

It’s fun. And when students are having fun, they learn.