The People Who Can Make or Break You
Our goals in life can be very daunting with so many apparent obstacles to overcome. Most of those obstacles are the doubts we feed into our own mind.
Some obstacles are people claiming to have your best interest in mind. Other people are firmly on your side and rooting for your success. Not knowing the difference between these people can make or break you. Here are the valuable lessons I learned while pursuing my own ambitions.
Never ignore your gut
Since high school, I had fleeting thoughts of being a teacher. I would sit in classes and watch my teachers in action, wondering if I could do what they do. I observed the good teachers and admired how they influenced their students. And I would also note the bad teachers and try to learn what not to do.
Every time those fleeting thoughts entered my mind, I cast them aside, thinking I lacked the patience for such a profession. Even as a high schooler, I didn’t have a lot of patience for my peers. How could I possibly have the patience for kids as an adult? So, I wrote it off as a ludicrous pipe dream.
The first couple of years in college were rough. I declared a major in business, but had no clue what I really wanted to do — or so I thought. Classes were a drag and homework was even worse. I constantly chose any available activity over studying, and my grades reflected it in a big way. By the end of the second year of college, I was completely lost with no direction whatsoever and thinking of dropping out. It was a very depressing period.
It takes only one person to build you up . . .
That summer, it was a chance encounter with a former teacher that turned my life around. I loved this teacher. He may well have been my most influential male role model during high school. He went to the same college, so was very interested in how things were going for me. I tried to put on a happy face and said it was going well. But he knew by my body language that it was a lie, and I knew he wasn’t buying it for a second. I finally admitted that college really sucked, spilled my guts, and shared how utterly hopeless I felt.
His next words blew me away. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I think you should go into teaching. You would be very good at it.” And just like that, my future became vividly clear.
It is an incredible feeling to have someone tell you something that you always knew about yourself but hesitated to admit. Those gut feelings as a ninth grader came flowing back into my consciousness. I always knew my purpose, but it took someone else who I respected to finally point it out to me.
Within one week, I changed my major to education and met with the academic adviser to set up my plan. That fall semester, my grades dramatically improved and I met others in my degree program who shared a common goal. My social life improved significantly, because now it complemented my academic life, instead of taking the place of it.
The next few years continued relatively smooth. The classes were challenging, yet interesting, and I looked forward to graduation.
For the last semester, like most education majors, I was assigned to an area high school to be a student teacher. Finally, everything I learned would be put to the test.
. . . and it takes only one person to try and knock you down . . .
My cooperating teachers at the high school were very nice and helpful. I was also assigned to a professor from my college, who would appear at the school periodically and evaluate my performance. I will call him Dr. Extreme Anal Retentive (Dr. EAR, for short).
Dr. EAR almost destroyed me. Or rather, I almost let him destroy me.
Early on, I admit that my teaching skills were rusty. It was a challenge at first to prep lessons and try to build credibility to a group of students who were not much younger than myself at the time. But I was determined to succeed. Those skills slowly developed where I started to feel more comfortable in front of a class. The students were very respectful, and I had no discipline problems at all. One of the teachers said I had the best classroom control of any student teacher he ever had.
My teaching style is one where I pay close attention to body language. If I saw that students were not engaged, I would shift the lesson plan on the fly. I had no qualms about shaking things up to keep the students attentive, yet still accomplish the objectives of the lesson.
Dr. EAR hated it. His “by the book” style and my “on the fly” style clashed like cymbals.
I dreaded the days he appeared at the school. He would sit in the back of the room with a judgmental look on his face. He would peer at me with obvious disapproval and condescendingly shake his head whenever I did something off the cuff from the written lesson plan he had in front of him.
After class was over, the stream of criticism began. He would chastise me for at least a half hour on all the things I did “wrong”. He implied that I wouldn’t make a good teacher because my techniques were not conducive to what a school teacher should do. He even hinted that I should not finish the semester.
I went home those nights utterly dejected. I laid awake in bed wondering if I was kidding myself. Those feelings of inadequacy and indecision from the first two years of college crept into my psyche all over again.
. . . and it takes someone to build you up again
I reached a point where I could barely function, sinking into a deep depression. Was I really that terrible of a teacher? Were my methods really that unorthodox? Dr. EAR seemed to think so. After all, he was the expert, right?
In a last gasp move, I decided to call the same teacher who helped me find my direction over two years ago. I was on the verge of tears and felt guilty dumping my problems on him all over again.
He listened intently and then asked who my professor was. When I said Dr. EAR, he was incensed. “That guy is a total asshole,” he said. “Do not let him tell you what good teaching really is.”
It turned out Dr. EAR got his education degree years before and only taught in a high school for one year. Apparently, he was pretty lousy at it, which is why he quit his teaching job, went to grad school, and eventually got his doctorate. Now, with important-sounding initials on both sides of his name, he achieved a false sense of entitlement to cast judgment on students like myself who were unaware of his own failures as a teacher. In other words, Dr. EAR was a hypocrite. My former teacher and friend saved me again, and I am eternally grateful to him.
. . . With a Grain of Salt
With that new revelation, I was angry — for only a day. I vowed from then on that Dr. EAR would not defeat me. As my professor, he still had the upper hand, but I no longer cared what he thought. I remained respectful during his weekly critiques and listened politely. I pretended to heed his advice while taking his load of crap with a grain of salt, silently reminding myself of the fraud he truly was. I actually felt a bit of pity for him.
I graduated with my education degree, but ironically did not become a high school teacher. When you graduate in December, not many teaching jobs are available then. I did some temporary work at area businesses. One of them was impressed enough with my work ethic that they hired me permanently. I am now a corporate trainer and learning specialist using my degree for an entirely different purpose. I have no regrets how things turned out.
I also teach religion classes at my church. This still gives me the opportunity to work with high school kids, but without the grading and administrative nightmares that school teachers face every day. I develop solid lesson plans, but it also includes some flexibility. I try to create an open environment where the kids feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. And they pay attention because they never know when I will shift gears and surprise them with different learning methods that are both educational and fun. I love those students and they seem to appreciate me. I am a lucky guy.
What did I learn?
I was way too hard on myself. In high school, I dismissed the idea of being a teacher because I doubted my patience. Today, what is the most consistent positive feedback I receive on training evaluations? You guessed it — patience.
What others see as your faults are not necessarily wrong — just different. Dr. EAR was a horrible teacher because he failed to embrace any approach that was different than his. He could not accept any deviation from his narrow view of how he felt things should be. His was just one person’s opinion, and I realized it in time to just ignore it.
And the best lesson of all: Be different. Be original. Be yourself. In the classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”, George Bailey jumped off a bridge into a frozen river to rescue a man who was actually his guardian angel. The angel gave George the chance to see the world as if he had never lived to accomplish all that he had.
If my guardian angel ever appeared and offered a chance to see how my life would be if Dr. EAR had gotten his way or if my former teacher hadn’t been there in my darkest hours, I would walk away from that bridge and hope that angel has a good set a waterproof wings.
