it's the winter of 2015. it's 5 30 in the morning i'm sitting in a starbucks with my laptop open now class starts in two hours and i have no idea what i'm going to teach that day at this point i've got five preps and my whole teaching career feels like trying to grab a yoga ball covered in baby oil no matter how hard i try i just can't seem to get a hold of it and what i want more than anything is to be loved by my students and that drive has made me into a
performer like every day i'm shouting i'm whispering i'm telling funny stories i'm jumping up on tables all in an effort to make that class the most memorable class i can make it and so far it's working at the end of the year students write me notes saying that my classes made them love history that i'm the best teacher they've ever had and you know there's something deeply satisfying about that but the performance has worn me down to a nub and so i'm sitting in that starbucks frantically clicking around my old lesson plans and i find
nothing so i start clicking around teachers pay teachers and i can find nothing and it's seven o'clock by now and the panic is starting to rise i have absolutely nothing to bring them today and i'm starting to despair that i'm gonna find anything at all and if i have nothing to bring them then i'm afraid i'm going to bore them and if i bore them then i won't be that great teacher anymore and so by 7 15 my fear is mixed with despair and finally the time has run out so i just choose an old
lesson plan that i've taught before that i think is kind of related and i think i can pull off with some degree of flair so i close my laptop pack up i drive to school i'm in my classroom the bell rings the students settle and although i am definitely strung out i conjure the performer and start in on the lesson plan but instead of seeing faces of astonishment and engagement i see the students looking sideways at each other like looking confused with me which okay fine no problem i just increased the intensity with which i'm
delivering the lesson and that causes some of them to look down as if they're ashamed or maybe they feel sorry for someone finally a girl in the back named anna hesitantly raises her hand and i call on her and she says um mr heimler and then she pauses i think this is the same lesson you taught us yesterday now i know that's not true i mean i think i would remember if i taught a lesson yesterday and then another went hand went up and said this is the lesson you taught yesterday mr heimler and head
start nodding in agreement across the room and that's when i stopped and a great fear swept over me like i'm racking my brain i have no memory of teaching this lesson but the external evidence suggests pretty strongly that i did am i really that strung out that i can't remember what happened the day before so you know what am i supposed to do we've got an hour left in class and if i scrap this lesson plan i've got nothing to fill that time and at that moment not only am i afraid i'm deeply embarrassed like
the exhausting work that i've done to perform well and be the best teacher these kids have ever had has in a moment been stripped away from me and i feel like i'm just standing there naked so they're staring at me like waiting for what comes next and in that moment i close my computer put all my notes in my bag i sit on a stool and i'm just honest with them i tell them i'm sorry that you know my teaching schedule has got the better of me but we have an hour of class left and
so after a long moment i say okay what questions do you have and no one raises their hand so i clarify the questions don't have to be about history they can be about you know your life or about me or whatever and no one is talking and inside i've already started calculating you know what other careers i might be suited for and that's when anna who raised her hand in the beginning said how do you know what you're supposed to do with your life and so i tell her about my own life and how i've
tried to answer that question and she smiles and she nods her head and then another student asks what if i don't get into the college that i want to attend and we start talking about that and we start talking about hopes and dreams and after that more questions how did you meet your wife how did you know that she was the one and as we were talking i could see them starting to lean in because no teacher had ever allowed them to ask such questions in class and then the bell rings the students stand up
and they hesitate for a moment as if they don't want to leave this moment that we just created but they finally do on the way out anna stops and says to me mr heimler this is the best class we've ever had she leaves and i tear up because that's when i realized that in the endless cycle of performing for my students i missed what it is that truly makes for a good teacher someone who cares for their students and who acknowledges that their lives are bigger and more complex than my classroom and so that meant
i could set the performance aside because they never wanted a performance anyway they wanted someone to say i see you i care about what matters to you and so on the day when my teaching failed that's the day i became the kind of teacher that i've always wanted to be you
