Challenges in Teaching: Feeling Mediocre

I knew within a couple years of teaching that I’d never be a great teacher.  During my first few years, I just didn’t want to suck.  It took me a while to feel like I didn’t suck at teaching, but I never felt comfortable in my own profession. I rarely felt like I was actually good. The best I consistently felt was mediocre.

Mediocre wasn’t bad. I saw a lot of teachers around me who struggled far more than I did. These teachers couldn’t manage the classroom. They didn’t know their curriculum. They were either too lenient or too strict. I’m not insulting these teachers by saying they sucked. It was a tough job, especially in certain environments (that I won’t get into here). I’m just using these teachers to balance my perspective. Yes, I had a tough time, but almost every teacher does.

I also realized that I had become the type of teacher that I had made fun of when I was in high school: I had become the bumbler, the guy who gets distracted easily, the guy who occasionally melted down but never did permanent damage (I never got ‘talked to’ about my meltdowns). Whenever I had bad moments in front of students, I thought back to my former teachers who had also reacted poorly to situations and I thought, “Oh. THAT’S why they acted like that.”

Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t that hard on myself. When I realized that I was just a normal guy ambling through an almost impossible job, the pressure was off. I didn’t have to be a Jaime Escalante (who was probably a fraud anyway). I could be mediocre and still be somewhat effective. My students usually made grade-level appropriate progress. My classroom disasters were limited enough that I could laugh about them afterward. I handled the vast majority of issues without getting parents or principals involved. I had some great moments for sure, but was I great overall? No. I was mediocre. But I was at least mediocre.

I touched on this topic about ten years ago when I wrote my blog serial “Long Story,” which is based on a true classroom experience as a student in the early 1980s. When I was in tenth grade, I actually wrote a story called “Long Story” in my English class. And I actually read it in front of my class. And the teachers that I mention below actually existed. I just changed their names.

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LONG STORY: INSPIRATIONAL VS. MEDIOCRE TEACHERS

It’s weird that the moment I was inspired to write happened in Mr. Fay-gun’s class because he wasn’t an inspirational teacher.  He read novels to us in a monotone voice (my voice is monotone too, so I can relate) and seemed to go out of his way to make class boring.

Mr. Fay-guns wasn’t a bad teacher; he just wasn’t inspirational.  None of my high school teachers were.  One teacher was perspirational.  My senior math teacher reeked of body odor, and his white shirts had constant wet spots under the armpits.  Looking back, I feel bad for him.  The poor guy was probably nervous all the time, being surrounded by high school kids who weren’t interested in calculus (I wasn’t either, but I needed the grade).  I would have been nervous too.

Mr. Dillon, my tenth grade social studies teacher, sat at his desk and read the newspaper to us for about 15 minutes each period.  Since he liked sports, we usually talked about football in the fall and baseball in the spring.  I liked Mr. Dillon’s class, but he wasn’t inspirational at all.

Mr. McAllister, my 11^th grade government teacher, called me “Jimmy, the Geek” every day.  I was a geek, but nobody else ever called me a geek to my face.    There was a football prognosticator on television back then called Jimmy the Greek, but I don’t think Mr. McAllister was making a play on words because he called a bunch of other smart kids “geek,” and I was the only Jimmy.  He called other kids worse names: “moron,”  “dipstick,” “dummy,” “el stupido,” and “moose breath” were his favorites.  With Mr. McAllister, “geek” was about as good as any student was going to get.  That wasn’t very inspirational.

You can read more of this story at Long Story: Inspirational vs. Mediocre Teachers.

Also read Challenges in Teaching: Getting Students To Pronounce My Name Correctly