A Teaching Life

I was fortunate for forty years in the latter half of the twentieth century to be my own teacher: I decided what I taught and how I taught it even when pressured to do otherwise.

Timothy Snyder spurred me to tell my story. He contends––and I fully agree––that we need to bring the past into the present to better serve the future. I believe my stories will help teachers find the courage to assert themselves, to bring their full selves to the classroom, to invite their students to do the same, and to make their relationship with there students their first priority.

If teachers, instead, believe they must focus on outside objectives, to deliver others’ agendas and determine if students take them in, they become a mouthpiece for indoctrination, not a facilitator of education. Indoctrination leads to passivity, to susceptibility to rabbit holes of misinformation. Education can teach agency, make for decision-makers, and be skeptics when necessary in seeking truth and honesty.

I was fortunate not only to teach in the US (most of it in middle school); also to teach children in Oxfordshire, England, in a progressive primary school; and to teach English to Soviet children in four schools during the Gorbachev era.

I want to bring my love of teaching––the necessity of teaching––to children in face-to-face classrooms, human beings being human together. Everyone bringing themselves to the table without Chromebooks, without phones, and without AI information in their heads. Just people together, talking, listening, inquiring, wondering, speculating, searching. Discovering who they are, what they believe, what they care about.

Humans have become who we are through thousands of generations dating back to hunter-gatherers sitting around campfires telling stories. We communicate, write, think, share, touch, play, reflect, invent… We are a remarkable species.

I wrote Teacher in the Rye to encourage the human in us to be ourselves with all of our foibles, shortcomings, mysteries, unpredictability, joys and sorrows…If we succumb to the attempted veneer of life on screens, to a life dependent on AI, we will curtail who we are and become automatons without purpose and love. Given the recent successes of the digital imposition in the culture, these trends (I call them impositions) may well come to pass. I am grateful I will not be there. But I worry about my grandchildren.

What I accomplished in Teacher in the Rye, may not be possible in this time of standardized testing, imposed curricula, depleting support of public education, the still-low pay for teachers, and society’s deep anger. Still, I believe teachers who read it will be encouraged and perhaps inspired. Others who read it will discover ways to support teachers to assert their humanity in the classroom. And if everyone who supports teachers speaks up, teachers will become free to be their best selves. The children will be the beneficiaries.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard)

I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20^th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Blog or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.