One of the many benefits of being a parent of young children
is that you have a regular incentive to rise early. This means that on a
Saturday morning when the cupboard is bare and there is nothing for breakfast,
you can go to the bakery before they really open.
Poor, sad, childless couples sleep in on Saturday mornings
and go to the bakery after nine to be served at the counter by some teenage
girl that I probably teach. She’ll ask them a series of clipped questions: “White
brown or wholemeal? Seeds or no seeds? Thick-sliced or thin?” and get them out
of the way as soon as possible. When she takes your money she is making sure
that the till balances and calculating the wages for the shift that she’ll
spend on new shoes or a movie ticket or lunch at the dingy food court around
the corner.
But when you’re up early you get there before she has got
out of bed. The shutters are still closed except for the one on the end. The
ovens are still on and no one has booted up the cash register yet. In the early
morning you get sold bread by a baker and this is an entirely different
proposition.
Firstly, for the baker, selling you bread is a novelty. He
is up before the world and he would normally go home before any of his
customers show up. To have you here—already!—to buy the bread before he has
even finished baking is a rare privilege.
He turns on the till and he doesn’t really know how long it
will take to start. So you stop and have a chat. He’s excited that you’ve got a
house full of sleeping relatives that will soon be surprised by his hot
croissants. He doesn’t want to put the loaf of bread into a plastic bag because
it will sweat. He admires the son you’ve got wriggling under your arm and slips
you a couple of extra hot cross buns for him to enjoy.
The baker’s attitude to his job is entirely different from
someone who merely sells bread over the counter. If he thinks about the money
you hand over at all, he thinks of it as something the he’ll buy flour with
later to make more bread. The reason he wants to do what he is doing is so that
you can eat the bread, so that the sleeping people in your house will smell the
croissants when they wake up.
As a job, teaching has aspects of both the baker and the
counter-girl. When we’re checking school uniforms, or marking rolls, or telling
kids to get back into bounds we’re mostly the counter girl: going through the
motions because that is our job. The classroom can be the same if we’re not
careful. If I’m teaching a text I no longer like, if I’m running down my spiel
on essay writing without stopping to see if anyone is listening, if I’m waiting
out the clock.
The reason that teaching is a great profession is that, with
a little effort, we can be the baker. We can be excited about what our students
are learning. Our focus can be on them using and turning over their
understanding later—perhaps much later when they have graduated and moved on
with their lives. This is probably true of any half-decent job. So go down to
your local bakery at about 5:30am and buy something hot from the oven, the
baker should be an example to all of us.
For more on the wonder of bread as a metaphor check out this TEDtalk:
Don't go to silo early
ReplyDeleteI hope at some point you pick this blog up again, because it's interesting peering through the eyes of a teacher, who can critically analyse their behaviour and work…I think sadly, many fail to do this. You were my English teacher from approx. 2006-2009 and I stumbled across this blog from your article about raising hands.
ReplyDeleteYou were a hard/uncomfortable person to read at times, but it was certainly evident you were passionate about your teaching and that inside your skull, your brain was ticking away, constantly seeking to ignite a passion for young people to never settle for what was put in front of them, but to simply scratch away the surface to reveal meaning that lay deeper within. There is a part of me that really fears for the coming generations because, I feel they are becoming too complacent, lazy and somewhat inept in critically thinking..I mean actually acknowledging and taking in information, utilising it and understanding the meaning to it when their brains are already flooded with ultra sensationalist entertainment and mind numbing, substance-lacking rubbish every day. I guess I am curious as to how teachers are finding instilling raw information and keeping students interested in the learning process…particularly as they spend their lives 'asking and answering questions'. What are your thoughts…have you noticed changes in the way students absorb information and participate in classes (mobile phones were an issue in my years)..have you had to adapt your style of teaching (making it more entertaining?) to ensure your students are actually learning? Being an english teacher, I would be interested to see how you observe changes in language as well...
Oh and by the way…thanks to you, I am a confidant public speaker who rarely relies on her notes…hell, I don't even need notes! Write some more!
All the best, K.C