Psychological Damage and Teaching with the Toilet

My morning gym duty partner greeted me yesterday with a philosophical question. “Why do you teach? Someone asked me this weekend why I teach, and I couldn’t come up with an answer.”

I laughed. “The money. And I’d really have to hate it to give up the schedule. But we need some snow.”

“That makes me feel better,” she said. “The teacher in the classroom next to me said he enjoys preparing students to be good citizens who will shape the world. He was serious, too.”

I gained clarity about my motivation as the day progressed, and I began introducing the next “agreeable task”–writing an essay–with my newly found personal awareness: “You know, students,” I said, “Someone asked me why I teach. The answer is that I know of no other job where I can inflict so much psychological damage.”

From the mutterings a student’s voice emerged: “I’d believe you if you’d tell me what all those big words mean.”

That was in my last class of the day, an understandably restless bunch who need to be up and about. They were a bit excited right then because I’d just promised that if they behaved well for the remaining thirty-five minutes of class, I’d take them to the faculty bathroom to see the promotional hand-washing poster demonstrating one of the persuasive techniques we’d just reviewed.

They really worked hard to behave, with that promise, and when one student ventured (veered, more like it) off task, another student hissed to him, “Sit down, or we won’t get to go on the field trip to the bathroom!”

“Is it a boys’ or girls’ bathroom?” someone wondered.

“It’s both,” someone else answered.

“Actually, teachers aren’t ‘boys’ or ‘girls,'” I said. “We’re ‘men’ and ‘women.'”

At the appointed time we herded down the hallway, and I opened wide the tiny room’s door displaying the poster that “appeals to plain folks.” Then we returned to class.

“That was fun,” I overheard. “We should do more field trips.”