I can do a lot of things. I bloody well should, considering how old I am. I can read sideways, upside-down, and in several languages, though not all at the same time. I can do a tidy dive and a messy cannonball. I can make about fifty different kinds of soup. I can sing harmony to every Christmas carol. I can make a baby smile from across the room. I can give good advice, and I can keep it behind my teeth when that\u2019s the better choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are plenty of things I can\u2019t do as well. I can\u2019t play video games (even the nicest ones give me anxiety attacks). I can\u2019t read just one book at a time. I can\u2019t keep a tidy house. I can\u2019t balance a checkbook. I can\u2019t fall asleep without white noise. And of course, there are all the things I can\u2019t do anymore because while the spirit is willing, the flesh is very weak: eat spicy food without regrets, walk or stand for more than an hour, stand up or bend over without groaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are, however, a few things I can\u2019t NOT do. You know, the things that, try as I might, I can\u2019t purge from my behaviour. They\u2019re like reflexes: able to be suppressed with effort, but it feels unnatural and unsustainable. For example, I can\u2019t not move. No matter how still it looks like I am, some part of me is moving just a little bit, even just my toes flexing inside my shoes. (It\u2019s a neurodivergent thing.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can\u2019t not swear. Yes, I\u2019ve tried, and yes, I have good control over the when\/where\/who of it all. But curse words are an essential part of my vocabulary, and I can\u2019t fully express myself without them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I can\u2019t not speak out when I see injustice. I\u2019ve tried that too, but it\u2019s just impossible for me to ignore the pain and suffering of others and try to do something. I\u2019m partial to marches and protests and community organising, but I know every shared petition or resource has the power to change the world, even if only for one person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of all, though, I can\u2019t not teach. When it\u2019s not my job as a university lecturer or teacher aide, I find other ways to teach people new things. I train volunteers in activist skills like phonebanking or de-escalation. I demo card games at conventions. I show people how to use the self-serve kiosk at the airport or McDonalds. I share unsolicited informative asides at the museum or bookstore or a cultural attraction. I sprinkle conversations with my family with relevant facts or topical insights. Not all of these are met with the enthusiasm I\u2019m looking for, but I persist. Sometimes, they just want me to pass the salt, not tell them that the word \u2018salary\u2019 comes from the Roman practice of paying its soldiers with the stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My chronic inability to stop teaching is directly related to my inability to stop learning. I\u2019m constantly reading and listening and absorbing information in any format I can find, on more topics than you could imagine. I take year-long correspondence courses in other cultures and languages. I consume audiobooks and podcasts while I drive and cook. I watch documentaries and video essays while I stitch and fold laundry. And what I understand and find interesting, I immediately want to share with others. It\u2019s not that I feel like I\u2019m a better vector for learning than other sources of information–I just need to share my enthusiasm for knowing things. I\u2019m like a missionary who\u2019s seen the light, except I\u2019ve seen so many lights, and maybe just one of them will illuminate something for someone else and help them find a thing they\u2019ve been looking for. My sermons in this ministry most commonly end in the words \u201cIsn\u2019t that cool?\u201d or \u201cSo now you know!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this is to say, I started a graduate diploma program to get my certification as a high school teacher at age 50. There are some who would say I\u2019m finally getting around to what I should\u2019ve done straight away, and they\u2019re not wrong. Looking back, it seems like I was fated to be the kind of high school teacher I most admired: the ones who loved their subjects, who loved their students, and wanted to help each of them find the thing that would reveal something about themselves or their world. All my time in grad school was ultimately about trying to become a professor who would do those things, and I was doomed to failure when I realised that university jobs are more about politics and independent research and the publication and grant-writing hustle than teaching. My favorite jobs have let me do the core job of enlightenment: lecturer, audiobook narrator, radio newsreader, teacher aide and tutor for students with learning differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here I am, full circle and halfway to becoming a high school teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand. I\u2019m concentrating in History, Social Sciences, and English, but with my educational background, I\u2019m eager to try my hand at Classics, Media Studies, and French too. I\u2019ll never be able to work more than part time because of my cursed, haunted, chronically in pain body, but I know I can create the kind of space where students walk in the door as their whole selves and walk back out understanding something more than they did before. I can be the kind of teacher who creates a safe space where some fragile and misunderstood kids might relax and bloom. And most of all, I can go to sleep at night, knowing I can wake up and do the thing I can\u2019t not do all day long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can do a lot of things. I bloody well should, considering how old I am. I can read sideways, upside-down, and in several languages, though not all at the same time. I can do a tidy dive and a messy cannonball. I can make about fifty different kinds of soup. I can sing harmony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[84,539,147,18],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum-instruction","tag-education","tag-learning","tag-teaching","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}