Anthony S. Colucci - Copilots, Duties, and Piña Coladas: How to Be a Great Teacher

COPILOTS, DUTIES,
AND PIA COLADAS

HOW TO BE A GREAT TEACHER

ANTHONY S. COLUCCI

AuthorHouse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

2009 Anthony S. Colucci. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 12/14/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3940-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0666-9 (ebk)

To all the great and not so great teachers that I had for making me who I am

Contents

Mr. Colucci,

I dont know if you remember me, but you once gave me the Heimlich maneuver by spinning me around after I choked on a sports drink in eighth grade. Im pretty sure I was the smallest eighth grader youd ever seen. I was checking out the schools website today and saw that you were still a teacher there. Thats awesome! Its incredible to think there are kids just like me being taught similar things I was when I was there.

I hope you still have that model senate program. It helped a lot of us kids learn about current and future events and taught us how to express our views in an adult way. I remember on September 11 we all just sat around a radio and listened to the news.

Im in my first year in the U.S. Coast Guard right now and living on a ship. I wanted to thank you for the positive impact you made in my life. You showed me that even in public school, teachers go out of their way to care about students. I know few teachers who seemed to care for what they taught as much as you.

Have a good one.

Joey

WELCOME!

A fter a decade of teaching, I have heard countless solutions to educations ills. I enthusiastically continue to learn about these supposed strategies daily. Today, I read about the power of language and how, just by choosing the right words, you could transform your classroom into a class of scholars. Yesterday, I read you could do the same by simply differentiating instruction for each student. The prior day, someone decided that merit pay was the antidote.

Well, Ive chosen my words carefully, differentiated instruction, and received merit pay. Ive also gone to hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of training, earned a Masters Degree, earned National Board Certification, received many awards for teaching, encouraged and implemented parent involvement, and have done countless other things good teachers do. I will say that I think Im an effective teacher. On my best days, some might even say Im a great teacher. I probably could even make it sound as if my classroom was some kind of utopia, which seems to be the thing to do whenever somebody is trying to sell an educational product. However, truth and reality are factors that need to be put back into the educational equation.

There are no groundbreaking insights for educators in this book. Its my belief that too many ideas, initiatives, statutes, and laws have clouded education. I believe that teaching has become something more complicated than it really is. What I hope Ive set forth is an entertaining reminder to teachers. These strategies are things you already know; however, they sometimes get blurred when youre on the front lines.

I was amazed to see as I wrote this book that I couldnt separate my experiences as a teacher from my experiences as a student. This is a testament of the power teachers have. Sit back and enjoy. After reading this, I hope youll be rejuvenated and have a smile on your face as you continue on your journey in the noblest of all professions.

A s a child, I was probably considered a handful, a thorn in a teachers side. Okay. Let me just say it. At times, I was probably a royal pain in the gluteus maximus. I was a very good student. I also was talkative, disrespectful, and rude. In 1st grade, I spit on a teacher; in 5th grade I said F.U. to a teacher; and, as a junior in high school, I took a play right out the cult classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High and called a teacher a d-ck. Wow! What an awful child I was. I guess I deserved it when, in first grade, my teacher embarrassed me so badly that it still haunts me today. She marched me into the other 1st grade class to show the teacher that I had put my sweatshirt on inside out and said, Look at him. He cant even put his sweatshirt on. How am I going to pass him? Yeah, that still stings. In 5th grade, I remember the same rush of embarrassment. My music teacher, who, by the way, was so obese she sat on two student desks one for each cheek, scolded me in front of the whole class, saying in a mocking voice, I dont care that your mother came in here and said you dont like to sing because your father doesnt sing in church. Another phrase some teachers must have learned in their teacher training programs that was launched on me on a few occasions was, Youre going to end up DEAD OR IN JAIL.

Thats right. People who were shaping my future were telling me I was going to end up dead or in jail. Holy crap! What a thing to say to a child! What a vision of the future to build in his head! What a way to motivate him! Well, apparently they werent that good at their part-time gigs as sleazy fortunetellers. I am not writing this from the confines of a cell, nor am I dead. I guess they were partly right, though. Much like every human being, I will die one day.

Research will tell you that crucial parts of the human brain are not even developed in some people until they are well into their 20s. I suspect I was one of those people. Are you the same person you were at 20, 30, 50? People are constantly changing and, hopefully, for the better. How dare we judge anyone or say anything harsh to someone because he is not a fully-formed adult yet. After many years of teaching middle school, which most people cite as the hardest age to deal with, my mantra to coworkers, administrators and parents became, Kids will change when theyre ready. You cant change them. I dont know much about horses; I am actually a little afraid of them, but as the old saying goes, you can lead them to water but you cant make them drink, applies to kids, too. You may be asking where I got such wonderful insight into this? I got it at Wal-Mart, of course.

Yes, thats correct. I cant tell you how many times Ive bumped into past students who, by the way, now were almost completely unrecognizable to me, that were complete terrors in 7th and 8th grade. I hear the familiar ring of a shocked grown-up suddenly sounding like a pubescent middle schooler calling, Mr. Colucci. Then they proudly tell me they just graduated high school, are doing well in college, are working full time, or have chosen to defend your freedom and mine by enlisting in the military. They didnt call my name to rip me a new one or ask me to step outside. They dont remember me harshly. Why? At the time they were in my class, I treated them with respect and realized that they were just kids.

Parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers lets take them to the water but not waterboard them. Love them unconditionally, realize theyre not done being formed yet, give them logical consequences that will allow them to grow, but do not use your crystal ball to soak them with your negative vision of who they will become!!