Quis docui ipsos doctors?
“Who Teaches the Teachers?” Not a literal translation, but it is all that I could come up with given my limited Latin knowledge and a dictionary. Teachers are superheroes. I’m not trying to convince you. This is a known fact. To quote a very great man:
“(We) get involved in things sometimes because nobody else will…because it’s not in the rule book, or it’s politically inconvenient, or it’s too weird, or simply because nobody else cares.”
Let me put it numerically for those numbers-people:
An average school day goes from 8am to 4:30sih pm (extended day, extra-curricular activities and such). That means we have 2,550 minutes of contact time with students over a five-day period. Say the average parent gets home from work around 6-6:30pm. A suitable bedtime is between 9pm and 10pm. That’s 1,200 minutes of parent contact time.
This is not a competition or about who is better, I’m just trying to point out that only a superhero would spend that much time with other people’s children. Superheroes save the world. Teachers simply shape it.
Take my school for example. I won’t take full credit for phenomenon of the past month, however, I did have a hand at shaping it. Both the eight and seventh graders are reading Watchmen. Talk about the movie has been circulating since the first previews surfaced, but I took it to the next level when I – being the comic book superhero that I am – brought the graphic novel to read during my eighth grade Independent Reading period.
This week especially, they have been in a mad rush to finish the novel in hopes that their parents (over 18) will take them (under 18) to see Watchmen (Rated R).
You are probably wondering, “How is a teacher going to promote a graphic novel and a Rated R movie to middle schoolers?” My answer: because I am a role model.
The hype about the movie already sparked interest in their young minds. They were bound to read it eventually. Why not - being the superhero I am - let them see me reading it and open the channel of communication. They’ll think I’m just a cool, he’s-just-like-us-teacher, when in reality I’m using Watchmen as a tool to get them think about the material educationally. That would be me “getting involved when nobody else would” or “getting involved because it’s not in the rule book” or…you get the point.
So, let me pose a different question:
Quis custodiet ipsos doctors? Don’t worry, we are always being watched.
Let me put it numerically for those numbers-people:
An average school day goes from 8am to 4:30sih pm (extended day, extra-curricular activities and such). That means we have 2,550 minutes of contact time with students over a five-day period. Say the average parent gets home from work around 6-6:30pm. A suitable bedtime is between 9pm and 10pm. That’s 1,200 minutes of parent contact time.
This is not a competition or about who is better, I’m just trying to point out that only a superhero would spend that much time with other people’s children. Superheroes save the world. Teachers simply shape it.
Take my school for example. I won’t take full credit for phenomenon of the past month, however, I did have a hand at shaping it. Both the eight and seventh graders are reading Watchmen. Talk about the movie has been circulating since the first previews surfaced, but I took it to the next level when I – being the comic book superhero that I am – brought the graphic novel to read during my eighth grade Independent Reading period.
This week especially, they have been in a mad rush to finish the novel in hopes that their parents (over 18) will take them (under 18) to see Watchmen (Rated R).
You are probably wondering, “How is a teacher going to promote a graphic novel and a Rated R movie to middle schoolers?” My answer: because I am a role model.
The hype about the movie already sparked interest in their young minds. They were bound to read it eventually. Why not - being the superhero I am - let them see me reading it and open the channel of communication. They’ll think I’m just a cool, he’s-just-like-us-teacher, when in reality I’m using Watchmen as a tool to get them think about the material educationally. That would be me “getting involved when nobody else would” or “getting involved because it’s not in the rule book” or…you get the point.
So, let me pose a different question:
Quis custodiet ipsos doctors? Don’t worry, we are always being watched.
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