Education

A colleague of mine happened to walk by while I was in the middle of a conversation. As he passed, he heard me say, “The thing that bothers me most about teaching is the profound effect I can have on my students’ lives.”

That was enough for him to abandon any pretense of not eavesdropping. He stopped abruptly, stared uncomprehendingly, and said, “That’s the thing that bothers you?!”

Of course, what he heard me say was the opposite of what any teacher is supposed to say. Let me add, in case your reaction is the same as my colleague’s, that I also value, respect, and take seriously the opportunity that teaching presents to change students’ lives for the better. But I also have to recognize that I’m not perfect, and that’s where the problem lies.

I was raised and educated by people who meant well, who wanted nothing but the best for me. And yet, they misunderstood me so profoundly that I was seriously broken before I even left elementary school. (My parents sent me into psychotherapy when I was nine years old, and that therapy continued, on and off, for another fifty years.) When I eventually took a job as a teacher, it was at the college level, where I was at much less risk of causing lasting trauma to my students. Still, I was constantly aware that the decisions I made could have lifetime repercussions. My giving a student a bad grade could make it impossible for him to be accepted into another school. My dropping a student from a class could end her eligibility for financial aid. My criticism of a student’s work could discourage that student from pursuing a career that might eventually have been rewarding and successful.

We teachers, of course, strive to be impartial and neutral. We assure ourselves that we didn’t give that student a bad grade; the student earned that bad grade. We didn’t criticize a student’s work because of our own biases; we did so because the work had clearly been done carelessly. Without those rationalizations, I wouldn’t be able to go in each day and do my job. And yet, I always felt an underlying uneasiness about the power that I held.

What provokes these thoughts right now is a file I just found in the depths of my hard drive, mysteriously called “Wheel.” It turns out to be a transcript of a dream I had in 1996, a time when I was in turmoil about the meaning and value of my life. I almost never write down my dreams, so this one must have felt especially powerful and significant. In it, I’m a student in an elementary school class. I’m pretty sure this scene never happened in real life, but here’s the way it happened in my dream.

TEACHER: Okay, class, we’re going to play a game now. This is a wheel with numbers on it, from 1 to 36. Before I spin the wheel, I’m going to ask each of you to tell me what number you think the wheel will land on. Whoever predicts the right number will win a prize. Are you ready? [Points to the first student.] What’s your guess?

STUDENT: Six.

TEACHER: Good!

She writes the number on the blackboard next to the student’s name. As she works her way around the room, recording each student’s answer, I’m frantically scribbling on a piece of paper, trying to figure out the best way to predict which number the wheel is going to stop at. I quickly realize that the math I know doesn’t allow me to solve the problem, so I start to think about whether there’s some way at least to approximate where the wheel is going to stop. By the time the teacher calls on me, I’ve just about concluded that the task is impossible.

TEACHER: Mark, what’s your guess?

MARK: I don’t know.

TEACHER: What do you mean, you don’t know? Give me a number.

MARK: You didn’t give us enough information.

TEACHER: Information for what?

MARK: To solve the problem. It’s as if I said, “I have 18 apples and I give some of them to you. How many do I have left?” There’s not enough information there to answer the question.

TEACHER: But this isn’t a math problem. It’s a game. You’re just supposed to guess.

MARK: Based on what?

TEACHER: Based on nothing. Just say any number that comes to mind. Pick a number you like. Pick a number that feels lucky.

MARK: So I’m just supposed to pick a number out of the air, and if the wheel lands on my number, I win — even though I didn’t do anything to figure out the right number?

TEACHER: That’s right.

MARK: What’s the point of that?

TEACHER: There’s no point. It’s a game. It’s fun.

MARK: But my opinion of what number’s going to come up doesn’t matter. It’s worthless; it doesn’t mean anything. What matters is what number is actually going to come up.

TEACHER: Mark, you’re wasting everybody’s time. I don’t know why you think you’re so special that you have to get an edge over everybody else.

MARK: [Starting to cry.] I don’t think I’m special. I’m just trying to understand the game.

TEACHER: I can’t believe you’re being a crybaby over something so simple. Everybody else in the class has given me a number. If you can’t give me a number right now, I’m going to send you to the principal’s office.

They say that when you have a dream, you’re not just the “me” character; you’re every character. The events in this dream perfectly encapsulate what school felt like to me as a child. But I fear that now, in adulthood, I could just as easily be that teacher.