Believing in the possible
"Teachers exercise the privilege of being equal, at one, with students. To be this way opens The Way, the Tao, and lets everyone know their words are loved.”
I re-immersed into the classroom, expected to be in charge before groups of seventh and eighth graders in a room with desks aligned in rows, the way I went to school and was taught when student teaching. I would miss the open classroom being the teacher of everything, each moment unexpected, each encounter original. Now restricted to forty-five-minute periods, a lesson will happen, students depart, and another batch will arrive––five times a day, like clockwork. I quickly adjusted, after all I did school that way through graduate school and in my first seven years as a teacher.
I would still be with eighth graders, some who have stayed with me into my new team. I would not be in front of desks set in rows but will have trapezoid tables I requested that I could rearrange to suit lessons. With a captive audience, my punning reemerged, helping me to recapture ‘teaching from the front,’ keeping it alive my way.
In 1984, two packages arrive in the mail. From the first, I lift out its Picasso box, open it and slowly lift out the 128K state-of-the-art beige Macintosh computer, keyboard, and mouse. From a second box, I find an ImageWriter printer, a hard drive, and a small box of three-and-one-half-inch floppy disks. I plug in the Macintosh and turn it on. In the middle of its nine-inch monochromic display screen, a dual-face, line-drawn image materializes: ‘Hello.’ I am in awe!
After using the manual to set it up, I put it aside as I discover how easily I navigate its menu. Before long I become one with my beloved Macintosh. The manual collected dust.
For the first time I could read and edit my typing. I gave up using a typewriter years a go; I erased nearly as much as I typed. Tapping with two fingers on my new keyboard, I discovered a sense of freedom. I did not have to ask the faculty secretary to interpret my handwriting when typing my tests on dittos. I became my own Gutenberg, a one-man publishing house.
I was a new kind of teacher, entering a new space, the second seminal moment in my teaching life. The first was when my department head released me from textbook-based teaching more than twenty years before. With the Macintosh, I created my own documents. I delved into my mind through the keyboard to create handouts that connected directly to where my students and I were headed.
I was first and always a teacher, the teacher I would be today were I still in the classroom. But now I am a writer, a twentieth century teacher-writer on his iMac, who feels responsible with my books, blog, and Substack to share the wonders of classroom teaching and encourage today’s teachers to seize control of their classrooms. I was fortunate from my first days that being a teacher meant to educate, not to be a conduit for others’ directives.
Believing in the possible allowed me to be open, whether faced with challenges in my teaching circumstances or discovering the joy of an unexpected ally, my Macintosh.
