by J. Thorn
People pass judgment on what it means to be successful, and these kids were successful beyond academic prowess. Academic success is developmental. During faculty meetings, I don’t say much, but I do stand up for the same kids that are being picked on, and I remind the teachers that kids develop at their own rates, especially in adolescence. There will be a wider diversity intellectually, socially, and emotionally. Because of that, I weigh more of the intangibles when it comes to success. If we can look beyond the tangibles, we can see the intangibles, which are truly the most important. But again, we’re in a system where they look at scores. Maybe in twenty to thirty years we’ll be better at looking at those intangibles instead of how much information you can shove in your head and remember later.
J.: If you could deliver an unedited message to new teachers, whether in private or public education, what would it be?
DON: They’ve chosen teaching. I don’t know why they’ve chosen teaching, their reasons. But they’d have to tell me that they love kids. If they don’t love kids then they shouldn’t be teaching. The second thing I would tell them is to always, always be yourself. From that standpoint, you should teach from your personality. You cannot teach with someone else’s style. You have to be true to who you are. If you’re an energetic, enthusiastic person then you’re an energetic and enthusiastic person. You cannot take that from somebody else, and kids need every different type of style. We all do. Regardless of your style, you need to be sincerely interested in what you’re doing in the classroom. If you’re not, the kids will pick up on it right away. Don’t try to fool anybody. It can’t just be a job for you. The word ‘passion’ is thrown around a lot because it’s an easy word to use. If you are passionate about what you do, the kids will want to know why, and they’re going to pay attention. When you teach, that’s got to come across. Also, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. What’s different about me now from when I first started is that now I go into the classroom and I wonder every day what I’m going to learn instead of what I’m going to teach. It is so important to have an open mind.
An Interview with Emily
Emily is adored by the kids. Not because she hands out candy during class or pretends to be buddies, but because she is warm, empathetic, and truly cares about them. She has been a middle school intern for two semesters and is hoping to begin a career in teaching and coaching soon.
Emily provided me with a perspective that we get only once in life, looking at a career from the starting line. Her fears and hopes represent the time we live in, one of dwindling abundance and global uncertainty.
J.: What are you most frightened about?
EMILY: One of the things I’m most frightened about is not being in a community with a supportive administrative staff, having people that support me and feeling like what I’m doing is right without people micro-managing. I’m scared of going into a school environment with classroom management and seeing how it changes in the public schools versus the private. I’m frightened about the direction education is going, how payoff is based on how well you get the kids to pass tests or if you get certain kids to pass tests, because I don’t think it really shows the kind of teacher you are as it varies from class to class.
J.: What are you excited about? What are you looking forward to?
EMILY: I’m really excited to have my own classroom, to have that type of freedom. Teaching is the one thing where even though you still have a boss, you still have a little bit of freedom, and I feel like having my own classroom will let me help kids in a way that is engaging and relevant. Growing up, I didn’t have very good teachers. When I look back, the good and the bad teachers, aside from my family, have had the most impact on my life. Being a teacher is such an important role because you impact so many lives, which is scary but pretty awesome, too, to have that kind of impact in someone’s life.
J.: How are you going to define your style as a teacher?
EMILY: For me, it will be about doing things that are engaging, relevant, not just giving kids busy work or work to do for no reason. I see myself as an asset in the classroom but more so outside of the classroom, coming from a coaching background and being a support system and being there for the kids.
J.: Tell me about something you’ve seen that made you think, ‘I’ll never do that.’
EMILY: One time, I saw a point where there was no organization, and kids picked up on that right away, and you could see how the classroom changed right away and how kids outside of the classroom talked about it. Another thing I saw was a teacher making a point to embarrass a student. I could never see myself purposely embarrassing a kid in front of a class.
J.: What do you think kids expect or want from a teacher?
EMILY: I think they’re looking for someone that cares. They want someone that is knowledgeable and knows the content, for someone that’s motivating and inspiring. They’re looking for someone that has boundaries and expects a lot out of them but not to the point where they can’t reach that. What it really comes down to is someone that cares.
J.: How might teaching look different in twenty years, or will it look different?
EMILY: With technology, I really see computers coming into play in the classroom, maybe even having classes over the computer. I can see teachers being evaluated by passing certain tests.
J.: How helpful have your education classes been? Have you applied any of the skills you’ve learned in the classroom?
EMILY: There have been only one or two classes where I’ve learned something really relevant that I applied to the classroom. Teachers preach certain stuff, but they’re not doing it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard about differentiated instruction, and yet I’ve had teachers that have only given multiple choice tests or have just lectured. It boils down to someone that’s a good person, someone that cares. You can learn about the content by reading. First and foremost, you just have to care. A lot of higher education is people making money off of you, making you jump through hoops. I’ve learned the most from my internship.
J.: It’s Back-to-School Night and you’re standing in front of a roomful of parents. You’re a new teacher; they know you’re a new teacher. What are you going to say to them?
EMILY: I’ll probably start with my background, where I’ve come from. I’ll welcome them and share my expectations, invite questions.
J.: You will be one of thousands in applicant pools. What is your plan for setting yourself apart in the stacks of resumes?
EMILY: The fact that I coach is really huge. Schools want coaches from the system, and many people don’t coach. With the way the economy is right now, there are people that are engineers that are going back to teaching, or someone with a law degree is going back to teaching. So to compete with those people, I have to hold on to the fact that I’m a coach.
J.: Given the number of career paths available to educators today, where do you see yourself in ten years?
EMILY: I think I’ll teach for a little while, but I don’t think I’ll end up teaching for the rest of my life. I see myself as a collegiate coach. I see how much teaching can wear on you, and yet I can see how rewarding it is, so I’ll probably stay in it for a while. When I think about what I’m passionate about, it’s coaching.
J.: If a parent asked you if a private school education is worth it, how would you respond?
EMILY: I’ve gone to private schools my entire life, and I saw it as something really worthwhile, but I don’t really know the answer to that question because I haven’t really experienced public school aside from coaching. It’s a lot of money.
J.: What are you getting for your money in a private school?
EMILY: One-on-one attention, constant communication, good or bad. Teachers and administrators always know what’s going on with your child. Private schools don’t just focus on academics. They’re also concerned with kids’ social skills and making sure everyone’s included, and I don’t know if you really get that in a public school where yo
u’re kind of fending for yourself. There are a ton of great things about private school, but it is a lot of money. If I had the money, I’d send my kid.
J.: If you could share your wisdom with a current student through an anonymous channel, what would you say? What advice would you give a student, from a teacher’s perspective, to help them navigate the challenges of middle school?
EMILY: I really don’t know (laughing).
First Edition Cover Art
Originally published as Educating Zombies, the original cover art mimicked the composition notebook we all know and love.
Raising Zombies - What's in a Name?
Dictionary.com defines a zombie as “a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.” Wikipedia states, “The zombie also appears as a metaphor in protest songs, symbolizing mindless adherence to authority, particularly in law enforcement and the armed forces.” Given these two highly academic sources, you can probably draw your own conclusions as to why the book is titled Raising Zombies. However, my love of the macabre is deeply rooted in my point of origin.
Beginning in 1971 (with my birth) and until I moved to New Jersey in 1994, I lived in an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh known as Monroeville, Pennsylvania, where an endless array of fugly (fucking ugly—fugly) strip malls and fast food grease-buckets straddle a commercial highway. But my hometown differs from all the rest of America’s sprawl in one significant way: zombies.
George Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and chose western Pennsylvania as the setting for most of his movie-making for decades thereafter. Many credit him as the grandfather of the zombie flick, beginning with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, filmed in Evans City near Butler, PA. In 1978, Romero’s next installment, Dawn of the Dead, was shot on location inside Monroeville Mall. My parents would not let me watch the film at seven years old even though Dawn of the Dead was one of the most critically acclaimed films that year. They were always so unreasonable. I vaguely remember the mall shutting down during the holiday season so Romero and his crew could film through the night before the real zombies (er, shoppers) would show up the next morning.
Monroeville Mall is one of the few commercial establishments in the country to carry such cultural significance. There is an unofficial zombie museum in the mall’s arcade, complete with t-shirts and souvenirs. Zombie walkers and tourists alike continue to roam the promenade with cameras in hand, especially while on the central escalator in the middle of the mall. Kevin Smith shot segments of 2008’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno in Monroeville, and the amateur hockey team in the film is the “Monroeville Zombies,” a respectful and quirky nod to Romero’s cinematic relevance. Seth Rogen has no connection to Monroeville. Or zombies. He is, however, Canadian.
I spent countless nights as a teenager in the 1980s stumbling through Monroeville Mall (like the undead, but with worse acne) towards the Cup-A-Go-Go or a pack of big-haired Madonna wannabes. When it comes to zombies or brain delicacies, I know what I’m talking about. I was raised in a town where the most influential zombie filmmaker of all time made a masterpiece. That gives me a certain pedigree, as they like to say. I know what it takes to be successful at Raising Zombies.
Quick Setup Guide for Parenting
Throw out those volumes of parenting books with the covers that include Gaussian-blurred photographs and pastel borders. These guidelines work for me. Therefore, they should work for every other parent on the planet. That’s a 100-percent guarantee.
Treat children with respect.
Parents typically treat their kids worse than pets. Find a bench next to an old man at your local mall and take note. Adults will yell, berate, coerce, and often smack their children in public. Directing these behaviors at coworkers in the office would most likely result in a prompt firing without hope of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
Stop using punishments.
They do not work. If you have never heard of Alfie Kohn, go to his site and order a book. Do it now, I’ll wait. If punishments served as deterrents for future undesirable behavior, we would not be creating inmates faster than we can build prisons.
Stop using rewards.
They do not work. If you have never heard of Alfie Kohn, go back and click on the link in the previous section. Do it now, I’ll wait. If rewards created desirable behavior, every straight-A student would be a successful adult, and every dropout would be a failure. Don’t believe me? Two words: Bill Gates.
Allow true natural consequences to occur without abandoning the child or rubbing his nose in it.
“Natural” consequences are vindictive punishments disguised as “good parenting.” If you force your child out in the winter weather because he left his coat at school, your “natural consequences” are interpreted by your child as a dickhead move. The lesson is that forgetting your coat means your mom let you get the flu.
Honor creativity, for real.
The idea of honoring creativity feels safer than honoring creativity. Creative outlets provided through art and music are not a luxury of smart, motivated kids. It is not a privilege. Creativity is essential to the social and emotional growth of everyone. Divergent thinking followed by convergent thinking is not fostered by absolute-authority parenting. Creating shit is what sets us apart from the apes, except the ones that finger paint.
One final comment on parenting. For you, bonehead.
Nobody cares about your kids. Nobody. They might feign an interest in the same way men do about other men’s lawns, tolerating your rambling while waiting for the opportunity to talk about their own. It happens to me every time I attend a gathering of parents.
“Susie has dance lessons twice this week and then a recital on Sunday.”
“Joey’s baseball coach is really great. He understands the kids.”
Unless your child can do something really cool, like fart fire, I don’t care. I like to think it’s some sort of inherent genetic coding that makes me want to die for my child and kill yours. I suspect it’s not quite as primitive as that. In fact, I presume it’s me. I don’t like people. I don’t like most people my age or in my socioeconomic bracket, or in my neighborhood. There is nothing bad about these people other than that I can’t relate to them. I don’t relate to them because I have interests outside of work and family life. They do not, which makes them boring, which makes me not interested in socializing with them.
To be fair, I have grown to dislike people the older I get. When you are in your twenties, people are doing stuff. They are starting careers, going to school, doing really great drugs, etc. Somewhere between passing out in an alley behind a trendy nightclub and waking up in a pool of vomit (owner unknown), they become stagnant human beings. People quit learning, because they feel they now know shit, as if age delivers wisdom all on its own, exempting us from any further education.
People that give up on learning are boring. The only thing left in their lives that they can share with others socially is the stupid shit their kids are doing. And that makes me want to stab them in the eyes.
Obligatory Charts
60/Day × 365 = n
Can you solve for n?
Whenever I enter into conversations with people regarding a project I’ve finished, I tend to get a consistent response. It goes something like this:
“Wow! You just finished a novel/album/sculpture/painting/hand-made sixty-foot yacht. That is so cool. I wish I had the time to do that.”
The subtext of this type of comment is the following:
“I wish I had the leisure time that you do to waste on trivial pursuits like a novel/album/sculpture/painting/handmade sixty-foot yacht. Unfortunately, I have way more important things to do in life like work, family, and sleep. Must be nice.”
I have not yet found a way to bypass the universal laws of physics. And if I did, I’d lie and say I hadn’t. I am forced to operate within a twenty-four-hour day like everyone else. “I don’t have the time” is simply a lie people tell themselves w
hen they’re choosing consumption instead of production. Everything you do with your time is a choice. If you choose to watch four hours of television per day (average American), that’s your choice. I choose not to. Don’t get me wrong. I love getting lost in the world of The Walking Dead. However, I choose to spend sixty minutes per day writing. I do this every day, and at the end of one calendar year (usually less), I have a completed novel. In the past three years I’ve written five novels. I can do this not because I have MORE time than anyone else, but because I CHOOSE what to do with it. It’s not easy. I have a wife, two young kids, a full-time job, a band, and routine overnight visits from the in-laws. My sixty minutes often replace an hour of sleep from 4:30 to 5:30 a.m. Sometimes those 60 minutes carry over into 120 the next day. That’s what it takes.
Now back to that equation. Sixty minutes per day for one year is 365 hours. Divide 365 by an eight-hour work day and you have forty-six work days, or about nine work weeks. Imagine going to the office every day for nine weeks and working solely on your novel/album/sculpture/painting/handmade sixty-foot yacht. That is the power of commitment and hard work.
