A Short Description of Teaching

It's 5:13.  I got home from work about ten minutes ago.  BP commented that I've been working late all week.  My spontaneous reply was, "Yeah.  I've really been enjoying it."  After I said it, I realized that while my response was totally honest, it was a strange, strange thing to say.  Once the kids leave, I take my time straightening up the classroom.  I plan the next day.  Then in my travels to make copies or drop something off at the office, I invariably find someone, more likely several someones, who I end up talking with.  Then I wander back to my room, find some other little job to do, and then, eventually I go home. 

So why do I like being at work after hours, when I am not getting paid an extra cent to just hang out?  Why are there always other teachers to hang out with?  I think it's the quiet.  The kids have gone home.  The phone has stopped ringing.  The announcements have stopped.  The bells are not proclaiming time to move on to something else.  It's quiet and calm.  There's room to think and get things done without interruption or time constraints.  Teachers can hold entire conversations while seated.  Usually we shout at each other in sound bytes as we pass in the hall amidst 1400 adolescents changing classes. 

Teaching is a fast paced, stressful job.  It is like being on stage doing improvisation in front of a captive and sometimes hostile audience.  There are no ushers to escort hecklers to the street.  The audience may not  be permitted an intermission, nor are they allowed to leave discretely, so all restroom breaks must be announced during your performance.  A class is a 45 minute show.  Then the audience leaves and a new group immediately takes its place.  You start again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  And again. You can be on an incredible roll and have them eating out of your hand.  You're at the top of your game and the next sentence out of your mouth is the punchline.  At that exact moment the phone rings and you must inform five people that the guidance counselor wants to see them.  But before they can leave you must pause to write a hall pass. 

Sometimes the audience harbors animosity towards you.  Sometimes they just hate each other.  The Hatfields and the McCoys are routinely assigned to the same room.  People who in real life will gravitate to different neighborhoods (like Appalachia and the upper east side), who will choose different professions (like cops and robbers), who will embrace different philosophies (like the Dalai Lama and the Taliban), are required by law to share closet space, crayons, and lab report grades.  When they get on each other's nerves or erupt into a nuclear war, the U.N. will not be sending a team of diplomats to set up negotiations.  Mostly because there is nothing to negotiate.  They still have to share closet space, crayons, and lab report grades.  So who keeps the peace?  The teacher.  But this must be done while continuing to entertain the rest of the troops. 

So when all the turmoil is done, when the last audience has left the theater, the teacher is left with quiet.  This is why we just hang out.