Teaching students requires more than books.

“Those teachers with more than 30 years experience, please stand up,” said the speaker at a teacher workshop day last week.

It was morning of the first day of my 31st year, so I stood. There were only a handful of us, and it helped me realize how much things were changing.

There are a lot of good younger teachers being hired, and I work with several for whom I have a lot of respect, but it’s not the same. We came of age in the 1960s. We’re primary sources for students who want to know what it was really like back then. We’ll be in classrooms only a few more years. Actuarial tables say we’ll be on the green side of the turf for a decade or two after that. Long since retired is the WWII generation, and their presence in the community is getting thin. The youngest are nearing 80. How is a community affected when people who remember the Great Depression firsthand are no longer with us to express their perspective on today’s events? What will happen when we baby boomers are gone?

Later, rosters for my five history classes were passed out, and I entered the names into my computer for grading and attendance. Classes range from 25 to 28. So far they’re just names, but I feel like I know them because I’ve known thousands of others like them. I’m thinking that, after so many years, I like my job more than ever. When my career ends, I’ll miss Septembers getting to know 10 dozen young people who are forming intellectual and emotional frameworks with which to view the world they were born into – and all that while going through puberty.

I’ll savor this September more than usual.

Tomorrow my classroom will be filled again and again with 13- and 14-year-olds. For the first week, they’ll be quiet. They’ll listen. Most will be eager. Others will have been jaded by their eight years of school up to now or by life experiences beyond the school’s control, and this will be evident in their eyes. They’ll be the hardest ones. I’ll ask them why they’re the students sitting at the desks, and I’m the teacher standing up front. Some will say it’s because I’m smarter than they are, and I’ll say, “No. That’s not true. Many of you are much smarter than I am.”

Others will say it’s because teachers have been to college and learned more. I’ll tell them that’s only partly right. Teachers have learned more only because they’ve been around longer, not necessarily because they’ve been to college. They get teaching licenses by graduating from college, but that’s not usually where they learn important things. They know things because they’ve had time to learn and time to reflect on what they’ve learned and you haven’t – not yet. They’ve tried out ideas and found out that some work well and others not so well. They’ve met more people, and watched them, and talked to them. They’ve read more books, watched more movies, had more failures and more successes too. And, they’ve learned from both – but mostly from the failures. They’ve been present at births and deaths and things in between. A lot has gotten by them, but they’ve learned a few things. Intelligence is necessary, but not sufficient. If they don’t know what sufficient means, I’ll tell them.

Then textbooks will be passed out containing Prentice Hall’s version of what students ought to know about United States history in the 20th century. I’ll record the book number next to each student’s name. Each will write his or her name inside the front cover of the book below the name of the student who had it last year. I’ll outline the grading system they’ll measure themselves against and tell them to get the book covered. When that’s over, I’ll ask them if it’s a good idea to rebuild New Orleans or not. They’ll have to form an opinion and back it up for the first quiz, and most of the information is not in the book. That will be true for much of what I hope to teach them. It’s not all in the book.

Middle school teachers sometimes feel like the old lady who lived in the shoe. More than 10 dozen adolescents will file in and out of my classroom for each of the next 175 days. Five groups of them will fill the desks for 45-minute intervals, and I shall strive to engage them intellectually, emotionally, and existentially, and humorously. I’ll try to know them as individuals over that time if they’ll let me. Some will and some won’t, but I shall do my best either way.

Tom McLaughlin, a teacher and columnist, lives in Lovell. His e-mail address is [email protected].