justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

They called me “Money”,

or Mr. Bill, or Mr. Bubbles…

I returned to the public school classroom last year, after leaving my last job teaching a class of 1^st graders in Concord, CA over 35 years ago. During that hiatus, I’ve been a corporate trainer, vice president, and an adjunct professor at U.C. Berkeley and at our local community college. So I’ve really never left the education profession completely, but working with students from all ages and grades in Santa Fe, NM (including four year olds in a pre-K classroom) brought back some rich memories of facilitating learning for a captive audience. (That’s one major distinction between teaching children in the public schools and teaching adults in a corporate or higher education setting; working with children is working with a “captive audience”, whereas the adults were somewhat free to either leave, act out, or check out except for their physical presence.)

In Santa Fe, I first substituted in a K-8 school, working as an aide. My day got underway with my helping a 3^rd grader with his “new math” (he didn’t know his time tables so how could he solve the problem the same way I did decades ago – using the “gizzinta” process?) and ended working with some 7^th graders in their orchestra class.

It was in the latter when a few 13-year olds asked me my name, to which I responded “Mr. Bill”. They immediately morphed that into paying a “bill”, and started calling me “Money.” I substituted in that school many times over the next three months, and felt special when the group of students called me “Mr. Money”. It felt like I had my very own posse.

That experience was great and the feelings of belonging extended to my high school assignment as a proctor for Common Core testing, when a 6 foot 4 inch junior taught me a new hand sign (which I guessed might have been either prohibited or obscene). Christian was his name, and he also made me an origami tulip with the scratch paper he didn’t use while being tested. I felt special, to say the least.

And last, but certainly not because they are the least - Mr. Bubbles was a name given to me by the pre-K four-year olds when I taught them the Alphabet Bubbles game at abcya.com site. I believe a little silliness goes a long way towards enhancing the learning process.

Teaching can be the greatest profession on Earth!