There Are Zero Good Reasons to Teach. Here's Why I Still Do.

You have to keep an eye out for it.

Pain

A kid we’ll call Gary collapses off the air-bike clutching his quads. He falls to his knees and splays himself over a bench. He gasps for breath, his heart rate near 180. He has another two rounds to go, and he can’t feel his legs. Or rather, he can, but the only sensations are fire, lava, and molten flesh. Every kid doing the test is in a similar state.

Repeating all-out efforts on an assault bike will do that to you.

As I walk around the room recording times off the bike monitors, I recall a speech I gave months ago. I told a story of an athlete falling to the ground post-workout, writhing in agony, similar to the state the kids are in now. When a friend walks over to check if the athlete is okay, his friend hears him whispering in pain, “uuuugggghhh that was so good, god that was so good. Grrraaahhhh so good, so good, so good.”

After the story I said, “The words you say to yourself matter, and the athlete that can associate the pain of the work with getting better is the athlete that’s going to keep getting better. That’s who we want to be. We want to be the guy who looks forward to challenges, because that’s the guy who can’t be beat.”

After the speech I outlawed complaining in the weight room. Complaints about difficult workouts were met with burpees. Kids quickly learned to fake enthusiasm when they saw something nasty I’d written on the whiteboard.

I glance at the clock and bark, “ONE MINUTE!” Kids start shifting their bodies toward the bikes again. I see Gary gently knocking his forehead against the bench - anything to distract from the pain. He’s muttering something. His eyes are closed. He has no idea I’ve crouched down to hear what he’s saying…

“Fuck I love this… fuck I love this… fuck I love this…”

Well I’ll be damned. The brainwashing was working.

I stand up and yell, “THIRTY SECONDS!” Gary drags himself back to the bike for another round.

This is the good stuff.

Asshole Kid

I yell, “Would you put my phone down! You’re still beautiful dammit! Now get out there and play some hockey.”

The senior girl using my phone’s camera as a mirror adjusts her wig for the twentieth time that day and says “thanks mista.” She puts my phone down and grabs a stick. Whenever the puck comes near her she starts to whoop. Then she lowers her shoulder and collides with whoever has possession. Beauty and terror, that’s the girl we’ll call Crow.

While on the train ride home, my phone’s picture app sends me a notification. It automatically generated an album called “Friendship Over the Years.” It’s a picture of me and Crow smiling. Awww, I think to myself and I tap the album. The next picture is one of Crow and her girlfriend taking a selfie together. Adorable. The next is a shot of the senior class with Crow in the middle. Also adorable. However, the next one makes me pause.

This one is a selfie of her giving my phone the middle finger with a smile.

So is the next one.

And the next.

Then I realize the album has over seventy selfies of Crow. Sometimes with friends or her girlfriend, but most of them with her middle finger. The album stretches over three years. It seems every time she used my phone to adjust her wig while I was refereeing a game, she would flip my phone the bird.

And I never noticed.

Laughter bubbled up from my gut, and the girl on the train sitting next to me gave me a bewildered look. I chuckled regardless. Over three years of smiles and the middle finger. It summed up Crow perfectly. I had to hand it to her, it was a great prank.

This is the good stuff.

My Response.

The Frenzy

I drop a bag of foot-long PVC pipes to the floor. The clatter echoes around the gym, and the freshmen sitting on the ground wince at the sound. One kid mutters, “What the fuck is that?”

“This…” I say with a dramatic pause, “is the only item you’re allowed to use to transport a marble all the way across the gym.” I hold up a gleaming red marble and it twinkles in the fluorescent light. “You’re not allowed to touch the marble with your skin or clothes, and anytime the marble touches the ground you must reset back behind the black line. Quitting results in a 0 for the day, and you can only get a perfect score if the marble travels through every single one of your classmates’ PVC pipe.” The kids groan.

“Can’t I just do this with my friends?”

“Nope. Today, you are all one team.” More groans at this. The class has been at each other’s throats all year. The teenagers had carved out their cliques and established hierarchies like they have done since the beginning of time. It was time to change that. “Do we understand how to get a perfect score? This activity is worth a quiz grade.” Uncomfortable silence greets my question. “Alright then, you may begin!”

They’re dejected as they mill about the gymnasium. No one knows what to do. No one wants to work with each other, and that’s the point. It’s an activity that requires creativity, tenacity, and, oh dear, communication - lots of communication. Eventually a girl we’ll call Nadia steps up.

“Listen up!” she says, “we gotta do this for a quiz grade so let’s just get this over with. Everyone grab a pipe and get in line.” Some kids roll their eyes. Here goes try hard Nadia again, but no one wants a zero on a quiz so they do as she says. “We’re going to connect the pipes together with our hands, then we’re going to tell Schuerch [that’s me] to place the marble in the first pipe.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” one kid says from the back. “We don’t have enough pipes to go across the gym. It’ll just roll out the -”

Nadia cuts him off, “I know asshole, that’s why when the marble rolls through the first pipe, that kid is going to take that pipe and run to the head of the line.”

Comprehension dawns on everyone’s faces. “Oh,” is all the kid in the back has to say. They line up to execute Nadia’s plan. All the pipes connect, and kids start yelling at me to place the marble. They’re ready. I yell, “Marble is live in 3! 2! 1!” I let it go.

Naturally they fuck it up.

Three kids down the line one of the pipes isn’t lined up properly and the marble drops to the floor.

“Ohhh my god are you kidding me?”

“Yo who did that?”

“What the fu-”

I cut them all off before they hit critical rage, “EVERYBODY STOP! I’m going to take a moment to give you a hint. The classes who finish this assignment, the best teams I should say, don’t blame individuals. They look for solutions. Think about what happened. What didn’t work. Fix it.” I really do have a booming voice when I need it.

Nadia steps up again, “grab the ends like this.” She shows everyone how to grab the ends of the pipes with her palms covering the edges. No more wedging them together and hoping for the best. The kids ask me to place the marble again.

“3! 2! 1! Marble live!”

The marble makes it farther than it did the last time. To the point where the kids in the front start running to the back of the line. The excitement is palpable.

Then it drops to the floor again.

A storm of curses flies from a bunch of kids’ mouths. Half of them are ready to murder the kid that dropped it, and another quarter of the kids look like they want to smash their PVC pipes through the ground. However, there’s a couple of voices shouting over the noise: “just get back in line,” “let’s try again,” “we got it farther this time!”

I begin to grin. A couple kids are starting to see the method to my madness. The optimists wrangle the kids back into a line and I place the marble again. Kids fly down to the end of the line as soon as the marble passes through their pipe. They make it a full two lines before it drops to the floor again.

More cursing, but they reset faster. They’re starting to believe the challenge is possible. Yells of encouragement now. Kids showing others how to cover the ends better. Each kid yelling when the marble is in their pipe to communicate it’s location. Nadia conducts chaos with instructions, and the kids echo her words. They fail two more times, but on the sixth try they almost make it all the way.

There’s a terrifying moment where one of the pipes has an open gap and I swear the marble is going to spit out just before the finish line. I’ve done this activity before. I’m nervous. Sometimes a failure so close to victory breaks a class.

But not today. The kid who back-talked to Nadia dives in and helps realign the pipe. The marble rolls through and pops out a few feet further. Right over the goal line.

I yell a triumphant “YESSSSSS!” with both hands overhead. The kids start screaming in victory. They run and hug each other. They throw the PVC pipes up in the air like caps at graduation. For the moment, cliques and hierarchies collapse. One kid is yelling, “Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!” fist pumping at the sky as classmates dance around him.

It’s a frenzy of celebration.

This is the good stuff.

The Old Man

I stand on a cold concrete platform waiting for my train at Harlem-125th st. I’m bone tired, emotionally spent, and the platform is the only place I let it show. As usual, the old man offers me his knuckles with a tired smile. As usual, I accept the offer with a tired smile of my own, and we bump fists.

I say the old joke, “here we are again.”

He answers with the same response he always does, “somehow someway.” He says it with a far-off look in his eye… then we both laugh.

The Eastern European-looking man is a gnarled work of gray hair and wrinkles. I don’t know what he does, but he looks like a lifetime of blue-collar work. We’ve developed a respect for each other over the years. I’ve caught the same train for the past nine years, and for as long as I can remember, that same old man has been there, standing at the head of the platform, waiting to get on the same cart as me.

I can’t say we’re friends, I don’t even know the guy’s name, but his presence is reassuring. I can’t say for sure, but I think he fights the good fight same as me. He travels far from home, works a job to exhaustion, drags himself to the train, and waits for that blessed moment where he can sink into one of the red vinyl seats on the Metro-North.

And what a moment it is.

When we get on the train, he takes his customary seat facing the back of the train, and I take my customary seat facing the front of the train. We lock eyes as we sit and grin. The moment my butt touches the seat after a day of teaching, it’s like every muscle in my body is finally able to relax. I don’t have to be anything for anyone for a full hour. No performance, no kids to teach, no battle to fight. Just sit. As I breathe out a contented sigh, the old man does the same. It seems the train gives him the same relief.

We give each other a nod. It’s always our final interaction for the day. Acknowledgement that the day didn’t break us and we’ll be here tomorrow. A quiet sign of respect. Again, I don’t know what he does for a living and he doesn’t know what I do either, but game recognizes game.

In my early years of teaching, I would study that old man’s face and I would get scared. If I didn’t leave this job, that’s what was going to happen to me. Gray hair, creaky joints, and a resigned trudge towards the end. He was a mirror, and I didn’t like what I was seeing.

But that was because I didn’t know what to look for.

Now I see contentedness. A man who knows he moved forward as best he could. A man who plans to do the same thing tomorrow. I still see the bags of weariness under his eyes. I still see the dragging feet of exhaustion. But when I see him now, I notice most of his wrinkles are at the crinkled corners of his eyes.

They come from a lifetime of smiling.

This is the good stuff.

This is the good stuff.

This is the good stuff.

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*4 years ago, I read Kevin Kelly’s article, “1000 True Fans.” The gist of it goes like this. Create a following of people who become fans of what you do. Be so damn good at what you do that people want to give you money so you continue doing it.

Here’s what I do. I teach, and I write stories about it.

If you’re in the position where you don’t mind becoming a paid subscriber, I hope you consider it… though if your initial reaction to that is, “fuck off, I’m just here to read,” then rock on.

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