Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that a statistician who was trained in mathematics, physics, and engineering and who did his most important work overseas approximately a half century ago has had more impact on my development as an elementary educator than anybody else.
But that’s exactly what happened.
After reading William Glasser’s The Quality School early in my second year of teaching, I was hungry to learn more about the educational approach he described (and that I described in my previous blog post). So, I headed straight to W. Edwards Deming, the man whose work heavily influenced Glasser’s.
Like many young teachers, I was eager to earn graduate units to move up on my district’s pay scale. To accumulate the greatest number of units in the least amount of time, each quarter I enrolled in an after-school class designed for working teachers. The classes met one night a week and featured a different presenter each time. On some evenings I would come away with useful information; on others I wouldn’t. One night a principal from my district gave a presentation that at first didn’t appear especially applicable to my teaching situation. Then, as my classmates and I were packing our belongings and preparing to leave, he shared a list of book recommendations. Fortunately for me, I was still paying attention.
On that list was William Glasser’s The Quality School.
Discovering that book was my first lucky break.
I first gave serious thought to becoming a teacher in 1992 during my final semester as a sociology major at the University of Virginia. I took a Sociology of Education course and loved every minute of it. In class we discussed and analyzed American schooling in a way that was completely new and exciting to me. When I graduated, I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a living, but teaching was increasingly on my mind as a potential option.
I worked a bunch of part-time jobs back home in Los Angeles in the year that followed while I figured out my next step. By far, my favorite job was working as a teacher’s aide at Overland Avenue School. I split my time between two fifth grade classes and did yard duty before school and during recess. I loved working with the kids, and I was fascinated by the innerworkings of an elementary school classroom. I even loved yard duty. Each day after work I read all the education books I could get my hands on. Theodore Sizer’s well-known Horace trilogy was especially influential.
One of the fifth grade teachers knew I had a growing interest in pursuing a career as an educator, and she gave me many extra responsibilities, including the opportunity to teach lessons to the class. I will forever be grateful for these opportunities because they gave me a strong sense of how fulfilling and interesting teaching could be. At the time a student-teacher from UCLA was working in the same class, and I learned about the UCLA Teacher Education Program from her and her field coordinator. By the Spring, I decided to apply to that program and finally live out my dream of attending the school that was only a mile or so away from my childhood home.
There were many pivotal moments during my year at UCLA that shaped my development as a person and as a teacher enormously. One came after I taught a lesson as part of my first student teaching placement. I was sitting outside the room with one of my supervisors, Sharon, who had come to evaluate me that day. Our conversation centered on classroom management, a topic in which I had become quite interested.