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Kevin Parent, The Power of Teaching. The Power of Teaching, Kevin Parent
March
March
Mrs. March was my nursery school teacher.
A dear, kind, gentle woman,
who taught me how to stand in line
and wait my turn.
She taught me how to zip up my jacket all by myself.
Members, guests, Mr Contest Master,
the impression that a teacher leaves us,
good or bad,
that is the power of teaching.
My first grade teacher was Mrs Bonics.
And Mrs Bonics taught us phonics.
And I thought she invented it and named it after herself.
One day, she pulled me aside and said,
'Kevin, 2 + 3 equals 5.'
And to this day
I still know that.
That is the power of teaching.
My first bad experience, however, came in the third grade.
Mrs Krause.
Mrs Sauerkrause had a horrible temper
She would yell at us every day.
I'VE ALREADY ANSWERED THAT QUESTION WHEN DAVID ASKED IT.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWER, YOU TALK TO DAVID.
DON'T ASK ME AGAIN!
And my mother noticed that
my friends and I began to change
My face broke out,
Tony began to stutter,
and David developed a nervous twitch.
THAT is the power of teaching.
But
have you ever had a teacher who recognised you,
who took an interest in you,
and encouraged you to pursue a hobby?
I did.
Her name was Sister Felicity,
and my hobby was AGGRIVATING HER!
And believe me: she encourage it.
By this point, I had given up
actually learning anything in school,
so I had to find new ways to keep myself occupied.
I constantly wore my shirt untucked
and my hair too long,
and when she threw that dress code at me,
I read it carefully trying to find a loophole.
And that is when I grew my first
middle-school beard.
But some teachers are like hammers,
they're constantly banging at you
trying to shape you in their version of an ideal student.
And like any good piece of iron,
I put up all of my resistance.
I used to stay up all night,
just so I could fall asleep in her class.
Yes, Joshua, I would even spit on the classroom floor.
You'd be so proud of me.
On one occasion, I even managed to
hang my underwear on the flagpole.
The more math homework she gave me,
the more I would practised my guitar.
The more she talked about adjectives and adverbs,
The more I would write love notes to Lisa.
The more she tried to teach me, the more I resisted.
And then
one day
the biggest surprise of my life,
something I never expected would happen
something I was completely unprepared for:
I graduated.
And I took a job in a steel mill
and I was in control of my life,
I was making a living for myself.
And for the first time, there were no teachers
telling me what I had to do, or what I had to know.
And for the first time, there were no teachers
telling me what I had to do, or what I had to know.
There was no longer anyone in my life
who cared enough about me to try and get through.
Now my only challenge was getting up each morning.
There was a void, a nothingness in my life, where education should have been.
There was no longer anyone preparing me for the world because this was it.
And worse yet:
this was all it was ever going to be.
Teacher--
I didn't want you to give up on me.
I wanted you to break through the barriers.
I wanted to know if you were real.
But I didn't want you to just 'teach' me.
I need you to inspire me, inspire me to want to learn.
But you saw only the left hemisphere of my brain,
which you tried to cram
with all the facts and figures
that you decided I should memorise.
I quit that job in the mill
I entered college,
and for the first time in years,
I loved learning again.
Art school threw challenges at me, challenges that I enjoyed.
I got all As that time, and truth be told:
it was fairly effortless.
because they didn't try to force to learn.
They weren't trying to trick me into learning.
They simply made me want to learn.
And that's what inspired me
to study education and pedagogy--
realising, or perhaps remembering,
that teaching did not have to be an adversarial position.
Some of you here tonight, you may are teachers,
whether by occupation
or by being a parent
or by being Toastmasters.
And maybe you know someone like the student I used to be.
Teach him well.
Because one day he may come back and say,
'Guess what. I'm a teacher.'
March.
In March of this year,
I started a new job:
teaching teachers the power of teaching.