A Holiday Story: An (Exhausting but Rewarding) Gift for the Teacher

The ECO Program: Those Who Can - Teach!

San Francisco, CA - Dec. 18, 2006 - Brian Quintana is a teacher – a very busy sixth-grade teacher who not only must find time to prepare for the classes he teaches, but who also must find time to keep up on the classes he takes at Alliant International University, where Dr. Trudy Day, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Education, is his  teacher.   
 
While many teachers receive cookies and sweets near the end of the term from students – some showing their appreciation and others hoping to push that C-plus to a B-minus – what Brian really needed was time. As a first-year teacher who is still learning to teach and lead his classes, as an individual with a visual impairment and as a person trying to cope with the upcoming holidays, he has had his hands full. He needed to have surgery, and was he was concerned about creating an obligation for his district by requesting a substitute for the final two days of school.

He didn’t need much time, just two days before the beginning of Winter Break. But finding a substitute around the holidays is hard anywhere, and in a high-poverty school district like Alum Rock, it can be next to impossible. Quintana dreaded asking one of the other teachers – teachers with large, needy classes of their own – to fill in for him.

Quintana presented his problem to Dr. Day, who spends considerable time mentoring Brian and other students who are enrolled in the Early Completion Option (ECO) program. In-the-classroom coaching is part of the support she provides to ECO students. In the giving spirit of the holidays, Dr. Day gave Brian her version of an apple for the teacher. “I’ll do it,” she said.

Easier said than done! Although Dr. Day has served as a principal, assistant principal and guidance counselor, she has been out of full-time classroom teaching for more than 20 years. Volunteering to "sub" for Quintana’s class initially looked like a mere two-day sacrifice. It turned into a full week of preparation that included two unpleasant trips: one to the doctor’s office for a mandatory tuberculosis test and the other to the social security office to replace a lost social security card.

In between teaching, mentoring and helping to run the Graduate School of Education (GSOE), Dr. Day had to find time to read “Where the Red Fern Grows,” brush-up on Egyptian history, and remind herself of how to handle the all-mighty middle school math intimidator: fractions and their common denominators. Classroom teaching not only involves long hours at school – often from 6 am until 4 or 5 pm – but also considerable time creating lesson plans. “I had forgotten how much time it takes to put together the lesson plans!” said Dr. Day. “It’s much different to teach someone how  to teach than to teach yourself. But you shouldn’t do it unless you know how or, more importantly, unless you can actually do it!”

And so, while GSOE student Brian Quintana headed to the hospital, Alliant’s Assistant Dean left her East Bay home at 6 am and headed into the traffic bound for San Jose. As she drove, long-forgotten fears resurfaced: What if she was late for sixth-grade homeroom? And what if the students just wouldn’t listen to her!

Dr. Day reports that the Thursday and Friday she spent in the classroom went fine. But around five o’clock on  Friday, while heading for the couch, she reflected on four things she says that she now "knows for sure” about teaching:

1. Planning takes far more time than presenting, and both are equally important.
2. All that stuff that I have been teaching to new teachers actually works!
3. Teachers need to wear comfortable shoes. Standing and bending and moving for eight hours is tough duty.
4. Twelve-year-olds are really quite charming. "It was such fun," she says. "I will remind my own students to stop and laugh at their students' humor."

“Oh, and by the way,” she adds. “Mr. Quintana called me in the classroom to check up on his students about four hours after his surgery. I think he must have still been in the recovery room!”

Asked about her post-teaching intentions, Dr. Day said, “I’ll be putting a ‘do not disturb sign’ on my door for the next week. I’ll be sleeping.”