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The Payday Between Paydays
Recently the teaching profession has taken a few hits in the state of Georgia. People, with the good intentions of improving education, have used their legislative muscle to create "Education Reform" in Georgia classrooms. The specifics of the legislation are not as important to the thesis of this topic as some of the political rhetoric that was thrown around during the "pre" vote by elected officials. Any attempts to change the system were proposed with the thought that some group of educators was doing something wrong. If educators seemed somewhat skeptical on the merits of the specifics of proposals, the educators took a beating in the press for trying to preserve the status quo.
I would like to focus on something a little more positive—the payday between paydays for teachers at all levels. I am referring to the magic moment when it is clear that a student or groups of students really understand the concept(s) you were trying to teach. This is the daily "payday" for a teacher.To me, there is a challenge of intellect between the instructor who understands something and the student who does not. Can a teacher conduct a set of experiences with the class and have the expected learning outcomes actually happen? This is a challenge today just as it has always been. Sometimes it seems the process of teaching and learning is more challenging than it used to be. Perhaps that is just my selective memory at work again.
In my educational career I have been privileged to have the type of responsibilities which allowed/required me to visit in classrooms of teachers engaged in the teaching and learning process. Sometimes the visits were formal observations and others just being in the classroom doing something while the class was in session. I have witnessed some of the "slickest" teachers you have ever seen. You can tell when they have the essence of the spirit of teaching. Their eyes are constantly giving them visual feedback as to when to strike with the next example, the next probing question, or when to retreat and just let the class reflect. They knew how to solicit questions from both individuals and the class as a whole. The drama is like a "world class" chess game at its best. There are winners and losers. If the teacher is successful, there is a "win-win" situation. If the students just don't get it, both the students and teacher lose.
The master teachers I've observed are very much like the orchestra leader who knows when and how to juggle/control the different sections of the cast in order to bring out quality music. When you are fortunate to be there, you can see the joy, excitement, and intellectual sweat they "ooze" as they stroke the strings of the minds of the students making melodies pleasing to the heart. The inspiration these teachers get from the successes they experience stoke their fires and they come back for more. They almost would pay someone for the chance to be in that classroom to perform their magic! (That’s a bit of a stretch, but you get my point.)Unfortunately, I have also been there when there was no sparkle in the eye of the teacher. The job had to be done, and the job was done. Perhaps it was done to the best of the abilities and interests of the teacher. Something was missing, and everyone knew that the learning would just happen without the passion and joy of learning. Each day just was simply ordinary. The assembly line rolled along and it was OK. Paydays for these teachers came monthly. Spring breaks were nice for everybody. Summer was even better.
I am reminded of two personal experiences I had in my own march through the classrooms of my past. Both situations were similar in that a class was too large, and someone pulled all of us into a room and split the class. The first time it happened I was in the 5th grade.
After 40+ years I still remember thinking that I might be lucky enough to be assigned to the "pretty" teacher’s class. The other one was a little chunky and didn’t smile. In the eyes of my pre-pubescent mind, the pretty teacher was a "babe" and must be the better choice. I was assigned to the class of the chunky one and life was unkind. 
It took less than ten minutes to see that she had a keen mind and a sense of humor. It took about an hour to see that she really cared for each of us in the class and would not let us perform less than our best. As you might expect, we all compared notes on the playground at recess and my class was the envy of the other group. The pretty teacher was considered a witch! I learned enough English in that year to cover ALL of my grammar needs for the rest of my school career. I was too young to appreciate what she did, and never really thanked her for what she did for me. I suspect she felt she was paid between paydays, and paid well.
The next time I had a large class that had to be split was in graduate school. (I had just enrolled and didn’t have a clue which instructors were top flight and which needed to be avoided.) Half of the group departed with their instructor and we were introduced to our new instructor. At his introduction, almost half of the class got up and left heading for the registrar’s office to make a class change. I thought this was a bad sign, but decided to give him a few more minutes to see if I should join my classmates at the drop and add window. There seemed to be an odd twinkle in his eye as he watched some of the students leave the room.
It was pretty clear after a short while that those who left made the wrong call. He turned out to be one of the most intellectually stimulating instructors I ever met. He was a master in getting the members of the class to express our thoughts and then to reflect on the values and core beliefs that guided our actions. The intellectual games we played each week were contests between a "man" and children. As a young teacher, I still had enough of a teacher’s eye to see what he was doing as he caused us to examine the foundations of our different philosophies. He was a joy to watch. He had fun and so did we as we learned. He was a Full Professor and probably made a little more than some of the other professors. I think he also got paid each Thursday night from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. 
There is something about the process of teaching that can be so fulfilling to one’s soul. I have yet to meet one of these super teachers that didn’t have the ability to break down a difficult idea into "bite-size" chunks. A person who is very knowledgeable in his field can usually do this task. The real artist senses when to pass out the "food" and in what quantities.
I have had a few of those paydays in my teaching career. I have been teaching something about technology for over a quarter of a century. In all of those years, it has been quite gratifying to see bright young minds timidly meet technology and then progress to the point where they embrace it. It has been nice to be there when it all came together for someone and know you had a part in the process.
I used to teach graduate level statistics for many years. You may remember that statistics is usually not the first course eagerly sought by graduate students. In fact, many will delay taking such a course until the last possible moment. Like taking a bitter pill, they attempt to swallow it with great fear. It has been pleasant to see the change in attitude towards statistics evolve from anger at being required to take statistics to several asking about a second course. Real paydays come at the end of a course, but if you are lucky, you can find many, many more paydays!
