Reach out to a teacher. We want to hear from you.

My former second and third grade student - now a 24 year old woman - texted me this image along a message:

I know this answer because of you.

Being a teacher, this may sound a little self serving, but if you have the chance to reach out to a former teacher and let them know how their teaching still lives inside you, please do it.

We wonder how the kids who we loved like our own for a year and then left us forever are doing. We wonder if they remember us like we remember them, and we wonder if the year we spent with them helped them to become the people they wanted to be. 

We wonder more than you know.

Pick up the phone. Send an email or a text. Maybe even an old fashioned letter. It will mean the world to a teacher who you once meant the world to and probably still do.

Hidden gems on my daughter's bookshelf and in my teaching career

My daughter and I pulled this book off her shelf last night, written by a former student named Maddie and given to Clara when she was born seven years ago. It's been hiding in the back between other books. 

My wife taught Maddie as well. One of those rare students who was blessed with having both of us as teachers. 

I just adore Maddie's inscription to Clara, and she does as well.

It is quintessential Maddie. 

No one tells you when you become a teacher that former students will remain in your life long after the school year has ended, and they will continue to touch your heart in so many ways years later. It's not quite as valuable as medical insurance or a pension, but in terms of benefits, it's close.  

Just over the course of the past two weeks, I've been contacted by two former students.

One of these former students decided to look me up ("It's 3:30 in the morning right now, and I randomly googled you.") and discovered that since he left my classroom, I've published novels, written musicals, and launched a storytelling career.

Back when he was in my classroom, I was still a struggling writer without a credit to my name. He was surprised to see all that I had done since he had moved on. 

He is currently attending Albertus Magnus in New Haven, CT. He's studying business management and is playing on their basketball team. He's considering playing professional basketball in Europe in two years. His email was inspirational and sweet, and it made my day.

Last week the other former student - now a senior at Suffield Academy - visited my classroom to inform me that he has the lead in their school play and invited me to be in the audience on opening night. He performed in my annual Shakespearean production - King Lear that year - and credited that performance as the birth of his love for acting. 

Elysha and I will be in the audience in April when he takes the stage.

Incidentally, Maddie - the author of No Socks No! - attends Eastern Connecticut State University. She's a communications major with concentrations in advertising and public relations. She's also a double minor in history and digital and art design. 

No surprise. She was a remarkable student in elementary school, and she remains one today. 

She graduates in May. If you have any job offers, I'd be happy to pass them on to her.

Embrace the snow day. The future is unknown. And possibly deadly.

Snow day! No school!

Many of my fellow teachers surprising despise snow days, preferring to begin summer vacation as early as possible. But I've always felt it fairly presumptuous to assume you will still be alive in June.

Perhaps not one but two near-death experiences and a gun to my head and the trigger pulled have altered my view on this subject.

Maybe even clouded it, but I don't think so. 

Take your days when you can get them. Don't assume anything.

The Moth: The Great Stargazing Betrayal

On December 29, 2014, I took the stage at The Moth StorySLAM at The Bitter End in Manhattan to tell a story. The theme of the night was Rewards. I told a story about an evening of stargazing with my students that went terrible wrong. 

I finished in first place. 

Here a recording of the story I told that night.

You can find all of my stories on my YouTube channel. 

Would it be wrong for me to encourage my students to memorize this?

13 Principles of Teaching

During my current book tour, I have been asked repeatedly about my teaching philosophy - probably as a result of a story that I tell about a high school English teacher. After 17 years of teaching, I could write a book about my philosophy (and perhaps someday I will), but for now, here is a list of my most strongly held beliefs. 

1. If you haven't given your students an authentic reason to learn, don't even bother teaching the lesson.
2. The most effective tool for assessing student progress is absolute honesty.
3. When it comes to discipline, you must only say things that you are willing to do.
4. The first step to planning every lesson is to determine how it will be fun for students.
5. Teachers must be reading and writing on a regular basis in order to be effective teachers of reading and writing. 
6. The student's voice should be heard far more often than the teacher's voice. 
7. Teachers must think of parents as full and equal partners in the education of the child.
8. If your students are not laughing at least once every hour in your classroom, you have failed them.
9. The most important lessons taught by teachers often have little or nothing to do with academics.
10. The best administrators understand that teachers are more knowledgeable about instruction than they could ever be.
11. Time is more valuable in the classroom than anywhere else in the world. Waste not a second. 
12. It is almost impossible to set expectations too high for students.
13. The single greatest assessment of a teacher's effectiveness is their students' desire to come to school every day. 

This video encompasses so many of my fears for my students

I watch this video from the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and it encapsulates so many of my fears for my students.

1. I'm afraid that they are growing up in a world with an African American President and legalized same sex marriage (two things I never thought I would see in my lifetime), and yet sexist, stupid, degrading beauty pageants like Miss America still exist and are watched by millions every year.
2. I'm afraid that they might decide that competing in beauty pageants like Miss America is a worthwhile endeavor.
3. I'm afraid that they might answer a question in the same inarticulate, imbecilic, and embarrassing fashion as our reigning Miss America.
4. I'm afraid that they might answer a question in the same inarticulate, imbecilic, and embarrassing fashion as the people on the street who foolishly agreed to speak to Jimmy Kimmel's producers. 
5. I'm afraid that they might become content creators who think that sticking a microphone in pedestrians' faces and recording them speak like morons makes for interesting or amusing television.

This is why I work my students so hard and insist on making every minute of the school day as productive as possible. The last thing I want is to see one of them appear in a video like this in any capacity. 

Mom and Dad Are Fighting: The Back to School Edition

I appeared on Slate's parenting podcast Mom and Dad Are Fighting this week, discussing what parents can do in the first week of school to help ensure the success of their children. 

You can listen here:

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.
_____________________________

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.