Public Education Matters

Transcribed by https://otter.ai. Please excuse any errors.

Intro 0:07
This is Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:16
Welcome back to Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmstead, part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and it's 120,000 members. A few OEA members in the Youngstown area were in the spotlight last week, they were selected as honorees for the spanning the need podcasts, Person of the Week Education Edition. And what one of those members said when answering a question about the biggest professional mistake he's made, really stuck with me. Jake Reed, an English teacher at austintown, Fitch high school said his biggest professional mistake was thinking he had to be what he called Super teacher, I could just think, super teacher, however you say it, it is entirely unrealistic. And it can break you as an educator. And I think that's something that really resonates with other educators in Ohio. So we asked Jake, to sit down with us to take a deeper dive into the topic. Jake Reid, thank you so much for sitting down with us. What is this super teacher concept that you were talking about?

Unknown Speaker 1:26
So the super teacher trap, I think, as you call it, that's that's kind of a nice way of putting it is a way of thinking that I think a lot of especially beginning beginning teachers kind of fall into it's this idea that, you know, you go four years of university and you're like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, my classroom is gonna be like this, and my students are going to be like this, and this is how I'm gonna run things, and everything's gonna be perfect. And, you know, despite the fact that your professors and even your field experience kind of tells you like, hey, that's fine, how things kind of go in the field, you still have this idea of, you know, how things should be from a sort of theory approach. And what ends up happening is you then have use then start to get into practice, right? And you find out that things in practice are sometimes not as they are in theory. And super teachers definitely like that, you know, we all want to be super teachers, it's this idea that we're going to do things flawlessly, and we're going to, you know, I'm going to assign papers, and I'm going to grade them all in one night. Despite the fact that there's 80 of them, like, you know, we're just going to push ourselves, and if the only thing I have to sacrifice is my own, you know, time and well being then so be it. And I think that that's, that's kind of the center of it, is that just never ending self sacrifice.

Katie Olmsted 2:48
So what did super teacher look like, when you were trying to be super teacher early in your career?

Unknown Speaker 2:55
So super teacher looked like me. I was at the school very late. I mean, granted, my first year teaching assignment was in rural Alaska. So there wasn't a whole lot else for me to, but I'm still a you. I was at the school very late, I was at the school early, I was doing an insane amount of prepping that even like the heads of departments, were looking at what I was doing and going, why are you doing that? You know, why are you you know, forcing yourself to go through and like, try to teach yourself these things before you, you know, go to go to teach the students because I was actually teaching a few classes outside of my area of expertise. And I thought I should be an expert in that, you know, I was I was taught that I should be an expert in that. So I'm over here trying to give myself a university degree in history, while also teaching it at the same time. And that's what it looked like a lot, not a whole lot of time for what I wanted to do what I like to do, and it just yeah, just kind of my, my mood just significantly plummeted from there. Well,

Katie Olmsted 4:03
as a lifelong perfectionist, I see a lot of myself in what you're talking about there, where the way you describe it on that podcast was just, you know, every lesson was going to be a slam dunk, every lesson was going to change the world. And you were pouring from an empty cup. Yep. What changed that? How did you get out of that cycle? I

Unknown Speaker 4:27
think I made it to October. And legitimately I was on the phone with the assistant superintendent and I was having the conversation of what happens if I leave in the middle of my contract. And he explained it to me he and he even even told me Look, Jake, it's not uncommon for people to leave, you know where you're at. But I decided to stick it in. And I remember it was because of a conversation I had with my father. And my dad told me Jake You have to my dad's a business major. So you kind of have to go with me on this one. I knew what he meant. But he used the metaphor of Jake, your company, and you have to do what's best for Jake, as a company, you know, if you're, you know, if your margins are just like bleeding out, and you're not gaining any profit from it, what are you doing? And he said, that kind of sounds like that's what's going on. So you have to do what's best for you moving forward. And he said, eventually, all the other stuff that you're concerned about your lessons, the grading and all that that'll follow once you actually start to take care of yourself. And sure enough, he was right. It's it was that and also kind of the realization that some of my more ad libbed lessons were better than then some of my very meticulously planned lessons, I still remember there was a lesson I did about haikus of all things. That was like very powerful for the kids, I made up the end, like it was just very, very powerful. So I'd say it was those two things that really kind of, you know, snapped me out of it.

Katie Olmsted 6:18
I think a lot of people, a lot of educators I've spoken with are a little hesitant to talk about needing things for themselves. There is this, just this feeling that you have to be super teacher, you are superhero strength, and superhero stamina. And every moment of your life is lived for your students. And to take a step back from that is not to say that you don't care about your students, I want to be very clear about that. You care so much about your students, you want to actually be a good educator for them, right?

Unknown Speaker 6:55
Yes. And I would even say to for me, it was the realization of in you're absolutely right. It's trying trying to word this philosophy I have kind of gets tricky, because you're right, you know, with without the kids without the students, you know, we we'd be out of the job.

Katie Olmsted 7:09
Well, you just be talking to yourself in a room.

Unknown Speaker 7:12
Exactly. And like, as much fun as that is. I don't think anybody would be willing to pay me for that. But the center of why I teach like my my mantra, I guess you could call it is simply because I like teaching. It is I like sitting down and thinking about, you know, what are some misunderstandings that my students might have about this concept I'm going to teach or what are some How can I explain this more easily? Or what's just a I'm like, a psychopath when it comes to figuring out like, breaking down things for people and trying to make it as simple for them as possible or ease more easily understood. So you're absolutely right. Yeah, at the end of the day, it is it's about the students. It's about the kids, but it's also about me, right, I get up at the front of the of the room because I want to, I want to be there in the day. If the day ever comes where I don't want to do that. It's probably going to be time for me to start going somewhere else. But you know, that at this point in time tomorrow morning, I want to be there.

Katie Olmsted 8:23
Well, good. I'm glad your students will have you tomorrow morning. And and hopefully the morning after that. Yeah, hopefully, you got to be more comfortable now. I mean, I think that must have been some level of super teacher coming in is you wanted to control everything.

Unknown Speaker 8:40
Yes. And it's. And you wonder that one of the interesting things about teaching is yes, you do. You want to be able to control things. And I and I am kind of that same way, Katie, where I don't think it's OCD. But it's like when I'm coming up with, you know, a handout or a presentation, I will take that, you know, extra 30 seconds to make sure like the font is exactly the right size, and it fits everything on there. And it it looks nice and neat. And it doesn't look like I just put it together in the 15 minutes that I had during lunch after I was done eating. But that is kind of a bit of a point is you have to let go of, you know, you. You can't make students do well. A lot of what teaching is, is you're merely building the bridge or opening the doors or whatever other metaphor you want to use. And they have to walk through it. Like for example, I had an assignment due yesterday, I was absent from school. And I thought it was pretty I thought it was a pretty simple assignment. Boy howdy. Me grading that assignment today was I apparently very wrong. So tomorrow we're going to reopen that door and you know, kind of nudge to them through it, it's you being a control freak up to the point when you realize you can't control everything that happens in the classroom. And that's where my other piece of advice from that podcast was. You got to go with the flow sometimes, if you don't, it's not gonna go well, it's not gonna go over very well

Katie Olmsted 10:18
go with the flow. To some extent, I think hearing about what you were doing in rural Alaska, teaching a trillion different topics at the same time, is trying to be too flexible. Let's, let's take a big step back in time. Yeah, what? What was going on there?

Unknown Speaker 10:39
So, um, so you want you want me to just talk about like, my experience, essentially. So how did

Katie Olmsted 10:47
you end up there? That's one of my big questions, and then we'll take it from there. Yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 10:51
usually the first one that or people at usually asked me was a cold up there. And yes, it was yes. So I ended up there because Kent State University does a really good job of making sure that their graduates at least have some kind of a job prospects after graduating. And they essentially did this, where it was like speed dating with school districts, you brought like 15 copies of your resume, you can make appointments, or you could walk up to their booths. And it was just, like, think of a whole gymnasium just filled with school districts, and you're just popping in for like five minutes, you know, interviews, and you're trying to make this like impression on these principals and other, you know, central office people. But the one booth that had my attention was the one that had a fish for a mascot. And that was the Lower Kuskokwim school district. And I walked over and I was like, You're not from Ohio, because I've never heard of this before. And I can't remember her name. But she was she was a nice lady. And she was like, Yeah, we're in rural Alaska. Our school district is the size of Ohio. And, you know, we're always looking for new teachers to come out have a life experience and, you know, teach students of a native population. So I filled out the little form. Which one of the questions oddly enough was, were you okay with an incinerator toilet? Or, you know, something like, yeah, there's a lot of

Katie Olmsted 12:21
very much like that you on this one to be like, will you survive in Alaska?

Unknown Speaker 12:25
Exactly. And lucky. Luckily for them, I'm an Eagle Scout. So I was like, oh, yeah, that's not that's not an issue. Um, and long story short, they, I think, called me about maybe a month or two later offered me a position. And you know, that just kind of took off from there. But what were you teaching? So my so my primary licensures in English language arts seven to 12. I had two sections of that I had a British Literature course. And I guess it was like a sophomore equivalency class. Beyond that I was teaching gin. That was fun. I was also teaching history, which I did get a little bit of help from our special ed teacher up there, because that was actually her background. So I guess I could say it was more co teaching that health at one point, also a lot of fun. And I even there was a point where I taught like a study skills class. And then I also oversaw a culinary arts course. I mean, granted, mainly the curriculum was online. But I was still expected to like put together Labs, which that was also a lot of fun. You know, shout out, shout out to my mom for teaching me culinary arts, because I've been lost on that one. But so at the end of the day, I had maybe four or five preps.

Katie Olmsted 13:49
And the thing that comes to mind for me is jack of all trades, master of none, is better

Unknown Speaker 13:53
than a master of one. At least, that's always my reply there. But yes, I did ended up becoming a sort of jack of all trades, it did give me a lot of leeway to experiment with things. You know, I think one of the things that we don't get to see often enough is, you know, I don't get to go into a math teacher's room and see how they teach math or I don't get to go into a history class and see how a history class teaches. So it kind of did give me that opportunity to try out a little different little, you know, a lot of different subjects. And all that.

Katie Olmsted 14:32
So you went from serving a primarily Native population in rural Alaska. Yes. Straight into the urban center in Cleveland, right? Yep.

Unknown Speaker 14:45
Inner City, Cleveland. happen there. So I moved back to Ohio. Alaska was a little too cold for me. moved back to Ohio. I got a job as a high school English teacher working for a child Your school at the time called lifeskills. Cleveland, I don't think I think the the charter itself is still around, I don't think they're they operate in Cleveland, or if they do, they don't have as many schools. But I started working there where that was a predominantly online curriculum. The idea was, we were a sort of like a credit recovery school. So we've we focused on attracting students who had dropped out of high school for, you know, one reason or the other. Or we were trying to help students who was trying to live a more flexible educational lifestyle, like maybe they had to work because of their family situation, but they still wanted to get a high school degree. That's kind of where our student population was.

Katie Olmsted 15:42
And so how did that student population and the one you were working with in Alaska, how does that contrast with who you're working with now,

Unknown Speaker 15:50
so, um, it contrasts with who I'm working with now, mainly, because now, gosh, the the student population that I have right now, sure, there are some gaps in ability, or there are certainly gaps in knowledge that I have, like I saw, I teach sophomores. So I might have the occasional, you know, especially this year with the pandemic, and all that, you know, I might have a student coming in where they're more akin to reading at the eighth grade level, or even lower, it just depends on the kid. When I talk, Cleveland and Alaska, we're talking to students who are still operating at like a grade level. That that's how big the gap was. And I still had students who were either, you know, performing at grade level or even beyond it. So trying to differentiate instruction was a little bit of a It was crazy. So that's, I would say that that was the big difference between the two. I also think that not to say that my students don't have their own problems in life. But I also I think that in Alaska, as well as inner city, Cleveland, there was definitely more of a die dire life situations that you know, students would run into, that was a little bit more normal than say, some of the some of the things that I see at my current school,

Katie Olmsted 17:17
do you think that might have contributed to your super teacher mentality where you felt like you had to be so much more for them? Because they needed so much more?

Unknown Speaker 17:27
Yes, I'm there. So like, if I could go back to Alaska, because that's really where I focused on, you know, the, the fact that I realized, like, holy smokes, like, you know, I have a student reading at a fourth grade level, and he's taking 10th Grade English, I got to catch him up. As well as just a number of other things going on. The realization came to where it wasn't necessarily that, I guess the realization was like, Jake, you're not going to do that. You're, you're not going to catch him up to 10th grade, not in one year, there's just no way that you're going to be able to do it. But you can still grow hair, you know, you could still give him the opportunity to show that he's that he's grown, you can give him the opportunity to, to learn. One of the things I remind myself even today is not only are we supposed to teach students and show growth and do all that data, stuff that we go back to our TV, Ts and we show all that, but it's also to make memories. You know, I really hope looking back on it. It's not that I hope that he learned something. Granted, I do hope that he learned something, but it's more of Did he enjoy his time with me in class? Did I make a memory with him? Was I memorable? Because I think that's where a lot of really good learning takes place.

Katie Olmsted 18:48
Do you have that in your own experience as a learner? Did you have teachers that were very memorable to you? who maybe were not that super teacher in that super teacher trap that so many people fall into?

Unknown Speaker 19:04
Absolutely. I mean, I think that's so so the school I work at is also my alma mater. So if that tells you anything about the effect that my former teachers had on me, that should be word enough. I mean, you know, my 11th grade English teacher, Heather Carr, Sally, who's not my it was not my boss, which is a whole lot of fun. I like reminding her where I used to sit in English class there now during during department meetings. You know, her as well as some of my my other mentors at the school, you know? Do I remember them for their teaching? Sure. Yeah. I remember. I remember quite a bit about Transcendentalism, especially now that I've kind of taught it myself. But that's not the part that I remember. I remember them being them. I remember them. I don't want to say putting on a show but they made the lessons memorable and it's not a joke. Because, yeah, because it's not necessarily that the content itself was memorable, but it's that tied to them. I can remember that like for kind of going back to 11th grade, I can tell you that, you know, the E for effect is the noun a for effect is the verb because of this dumb dance, that she would get up there and she would a is the verb is the noun, a verb is the noun and to this day, that's how I teach it.

Katie Olmsted 20:28
And I really hope you bring that up during staff meetings. Oh, I

Unknown Speaker 20:31
do. I do. I do very much so all the time.

Katie Olmsted 20:36
Well, Jake, thank you for sitting down for this meeting with me.

Unknown Speaker 20:39
Absolutely kidding. No problem. It was pleasure.

Katie Olmsted 20:43
You can find the link to the feature on Jake read on the spinning need podcast in the show notes for this Education Matters episode. And while you're online, make sure you subscribe to Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a thing. If you have a topic you'd like to hear about on this podcast, email me at education matters@ohe.org Until next time, stay well.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai