Dee - Teaching: its harder than it looks

Copyright 2012 Gerry Dee

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dee, Gerry, 1968
Teaching : its harder than it looks / Gerry Dee.

eISBN: 978-0-385-67746-2

1. TeachingHumor. 2. TeachersHumor. 3. StudentsHumor. 4. Parent-teacher relationshipsHumor. 5. Dee,
Gerry, 1968- Anecdotes. I. Title.

P N 6231.S3D43 2012 C818.602 C2012-902431-7

Editor: Nita Pronovost
Cover design: Andrew Roberts
Cover image: KC Armstrong/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited

Visit Random House of Canada Limiteds website: www.randomhouse.ca

v3.1

To John and Alice Donoghue.
Love you always.

I hated going to school. I had ADD (attention deficit disorder, or what they now call ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and that made it impossible for me to concentrate. I felt invisible in the classroom. The teacher was talking to everyone else but me at least, thats how it seemed.

When my regular high school had had enough of me, the guidance counsellor there suggested I switch to the trade school down the road. He spoke to me reeeeeeallly sloooooowly, like he thought I was retarded. (Yeah, I know youre not supposed to use that term anymore!) However, it wasnt until I switched schools that I met a teacher who would change my life and make me feel like I wasnt retarded and that I could actually do something good and make something of myself. That teacher was Mr. Fred Kolar.

Mr. Kolar taught chef training at North Peel Secondary School, and he was the first teacher I heard swear in class. He didnt swear because he was frustrated with his students; he swore at us because he cared. He actually cared about me and how I was doing, and Id never really felt that any teacher cared about me before. Mr. Kolar not only taught me chef skills, he taught me about demeanour and about thinking of others and putting yourself in their shoes before you decide to act out or judge. That was an incredible lesson to have passed along.

The reason Im telling you all this is because, like me, my good friend Gerry Dee (the guy who wrote this book, duh), also had ADD when he was a kid, and despite that, Gerry went on to become a teacher, an actor and a world-class standup comic. In this book, Gerry talks about having attention problems and about his motivations for becoming a (ahem, phys. ed.) teacher and all the motivations anyone can have for not becoming a teacher.

Ive never read any book written from a teachers perspective before. Okay, I actually dont read that much, except for People, US and The Source (a hip-hop magazine). To be honest, when I was a kid, I never gave much thought to what my teachers were thinking. I never wondered why they had become teachers or how they felt. Gerrys book gives the reader an honest, firsthand account of a regular guys journey into teacherhood (dont even know if thats a word or not). This book is funny (and easy to read!), and by the way, a book that every high school student should read, not just future teachers.

For me, the main thing I took away from this book is how similar being a good teacher is to being a good , Gerry clearly demonstrates the best way to tackle this as a teacher). You dont get into standup comedy for the money. You do it because you have to. You cant do standup comedy without an audience, and you cant teach without a class full of students. A good standup comic is up there performing for everybody, not just the other cool standups at the back of the room. Like a teacher, your job as a comic is to reach as many people as possible.

In closing, I wish that Gerry had been one of my teachers when I was a kid. He talks about liking the regular kids instead of the smart kids. I always thought teachers liked the smart kids more, but in thinking back to my own misspent time in the Ontario school system, the teachers I remember and who changed the way I saw them and the way I felt about myself were the teachers who liked the regular kidsthe kids just like me.

T eachers, students, parents:

What you now hold in your hands is the bestor perhaps just the most entertainingtextbook you will ever read on the subject of teaching. It is a summary of everything I ever learned about teaching over the course of the ten years I was at the front of the class. Included in this book are my anecdotes and stories about teaching (many of them based on the truth, but Im not going to admit which!) and about dealing with both students and their parents. In a way, this is my tribute to school life, from the point of view of a teacher who, like many other teachers, occasionally taught hungover (and lied about it), sometimes lost his students exams (and lied about it) and enjoyed staging impromptu baseball games in the middle of history class just to kill some time. In the pages that follow, you will find valuable tips and tricks that will help you negotiate life in the classroomno matter what side of the desk you sit on.

A lot of people think teaching is a walk in the park. Yeah, yeah. You have no idea! You think teachers just stand up there and lecture on and onand get paid for it. Heres the truth: there are only two good reasons to become a teacher. The first is July; the second is August. But if you think September to June is easy, youre clearly not a teacher. And to the teachers nodding at that last sentence: you have my deepest sympathies. I wish you the best of luck with your school year, your classes and your career. Because youre going to need it.

Teaching is a lot harder than it looks, and to be good at it, it does help to have a good grounding in your subject matter. If not, then the secret of teaching becomes appearing to have known for your whole life what you probably just learned a few minutes earlier. But the truth is that not everything about school is academics. Think about it. How much of what you actually learned in grade school do you still remember? Probably not very much. When I think of my own school years, I never think, Wow. I learned so many great lessons! What students usually remember is all the other stuff around schoolthe recesses, the field trips, the teams they were on, their friends, and the teachers who made class fun. Heres the truth: there isnt anything I learned in school that helps me do what Im doing today. Nothing.

Comedy has always been a big part of my life, and I have always enjoyed making people laugh, even though I never dreamed Id be doing this for a living. When I was teaching, it gave me great pleasure to put a smile on a kids face, especially if that kid was in a rotten mood and convinced that everything in the universe (and especially his teacher) was stupid and boring. Seeing that kid smile or laugh was my reward. I could look at that face and know, I did that.