What I Learned

From Menletter March 2005

By Tim Baehr

Fine Print

Somehow I had failed to read the fine print. Actually, it wasn't even that fine - I just didn't read the ad carefully.

The offer was intriguing: make one-hour science presentations to kids in after-school programs for $25 per presentation. Not a bad pay scale. And there was something about training and a mileage allowance.

The part that I was ignoring was something any schoolteacher could have told me: prep time will eat up as much or more than actual teaching time. Add in travel time and I'm pretty much down into minimum-wage territory. The travel allowance kicks in for very long hauls, and the customer area encompasses much of eastern Massachusetts.

We teach out of kits - huge plastic tubs of equipment. Some of the stuff is old and balky, like the strobe light that worked only upside-down or the laser pointer with the loose battery compartment.

It is possible to make more money if one does birthday parties and in-school workshops. Some of the teachers have been with the organization for a long time. But I really wasn't looking for that much involvement.

As I write this I'm about two weeks from the end of an eight-week gig, and I've already told the organization that I won't be continuing.

So my first lesson in all this was to read more carefully and think about what I'm really doing.

Problem Kids

I have three classes in three schools on three afternoons a week. Two classes are first- and second-graders and one is fourth-graders. Each class has 10 to 16 kids in it.

The youngest I had ever taught before was at the graduate-school level. What was I thinking!? I knew it would be a challenge facing young kids for the first time, and that actually was part of what attracted me to the job.

Here are some things I learned, or relearned:

· Kids are loud. Get enough kids together and the decibel level can approach something needing OSHA intervention.

· Kids are random. They don't sit still. They carom about in a kind of Brownian motion that is dizzying to behold.

· Some kids are less well-behaved than other kids (duh).

· The behavior-problem kids are not bad or evil.

I learned the most from the "problem kids." They were often brighter and funnier (and cuter, for some reason) than the less rowdy ones. I can see how the impish scamp can become a stock character in folk tales. Also, yes, the boys were a bit more physically active and therefore more disruptive than the girls. But not by much. Schools that don't provide a physical outlet for active kids, both boys and girls, are shortchanging everyone. Classroom management can consume gobs of teaching time trying to tamp down naturally active kids.

All in All

All in all, this was a good experience, but not one I'd like to repeat.

I've been wondering how the lessons could be generalized. Here's what I've come up with:

· It's a great idea to read the fine print, or at least think things through. I felt trapped in something that was simply too much work for the pay involved.

· Even if it's easy to bail out of a less-than-optimal situation, it's also important to keep one's commitments. I always had the option of walking away from this job, but my co-workers and my students would have been disrupted.

· Eight weeks can be a very long time. But the series was self-limiting and had a definite end. Putting a time limit on my commitment helped keep things in perspective.

· Small rewards add up, even short money for a challenging, time-consuming job. I netted around $500 from this experience.

· Anyone who works with young children must be crazy or a saint - or both. This includes teachers and parents, but teachers deal in larger quantities.

I had the opportunity to be open to a new experience, learn from it, and move on. I'll probably accept other small jobs, more carefully I hope, if only to learn more about the world and how I interact with it.