Doctor Grandma

The exercise proposed is to write brief descriptions of two recent moments in teaching: a moment when things were going so well that you knew you were born to teach; and a moment when things were going so poorly that you wished you had never been born.” ha ha

My first response is, I don’t believe I was “born to teach”. Maybe, but highly unlikely. I believe we were ALL meant to be certain places at certain times. Meant to meet certain people and affect their lives. It may be an effect that you don’t expect. It may be a negative experience or a positive. You may be in between two OTHER people, both of whom you know, but they are supposed to meet each other– through you. That has happened 3x for me. I introduced 3 couples who later got married, and the marriages lasted. However, most of what I am talking about is not that, it’s just helping one another along, in life.

I also really have never wished I had not been born. Life is okay, unpredictable, and one thing I’ve learned by this time: Whatever comes, you can handle it! If you have a faith or spiritual base, that helps. It helps to put your trust in God, to call on spiritual forces, or give your problem to something GREATER than yourself — give it to the Universe, ask God to take it, whatever works for you. Whatever comes, you can handle it, and we never know what’s around the next corner.

The first one, for me, I would say are times when students tell me how much they appreciate me. One time a group of sorority sisters gave me an award, for being “the best a woman can be”. I do not belong to a sorority. But I can’t tell you what that meant to me. Sometimes students write notes, of their own accord, just to me personally. I have some glued into a book I kept for teaching. These mean the world to me. Another GOOD time is when students who had already taken a class with me, voluntarily came back and sat in the class again– in a different semester– just to be there. I would always look at them and say, “James, what are you doing here?” to which they would say something like, “Dr. Black, you always got somethin’ goin’ on! I just wanted to be here.” And I always let them stay. They would usually visit a couple times, and then stop.

The worst time, the one where “things were going so poorly”, I know my worst memory of all. The time I was called to the Dean’s office and he handed me some horrible letter written by a group of select students who had decided I was the worst teacher at the school. They never complained to me, never voiced these things to me, and their major professor encouraged them to write THIS letter rather than direct them first to me, so perhaps some of these untruths would not have been written, so perhaps we could clear up whatever misunderstandings they had from my classroom that they THOUGHT they had figured out, but they didn’t. It’s really too bad, for them, and for me.

I met a woman years later. She didn’t know me, but she listened to the story. Her first question:

“Did they think they were special?”

I had to reply, YES, they were a somewhat select group of advanced students in a different major from my own.

“Did you treat them special?”

Honestly, I did not. And therein was the problem. I treat all students equally in my classroom. I’ve heard some of the worst reports ever given in a college classroom, without a doubt. And when that student finished his report, we thanked him and we all clapped. The same as anyone else. It is no other student’s business to know that that student actually failed that presentation. I didn’t treat the advanced group “special”. This woman’s insight amazed me. But her insight was not the response that came from the Academic Dean.

But it’s okay. Whatever comes, we can always get through it. God is my witness and my judge. I give it to the universe. So I have now completed the exercise in Chapter 3. Now you think of your best, and your worst, moments in your OWN career and see what you put onto the page.

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