by Tom Pantera
Columnist

The teaching career that I’m now pursuing began with one of those sharp turns in life that come in a heartbeat and unexpectedly.

One day in 2006, I was in the student center at Minnesota State University Moorhead to pick up my son who, unbeknownst to me, had already left campus. While I was standing there, Mark Strand, who at the time was head of MSUM’s mass communications department, walked by and I said hi. I’d known Mark for years – the media community here is pretty small – and we started making small talk. After about 30 second, he said, “Have you ever considered teaching?”

I had thought about it, but never pursued it. But Mark was in a bind. One of his people was unable to teach a section of media writing and he was scrambling to find a replacement. In that moment, I figured, “why not” and told him I’d do it. Two days later, I was teaching my first class.

And I loved it. It was an interesting mental exercise having to explain to student journalists things that long experience had made automatic for me. It gave me a captive audience for my reporter’s war stories. The kids were great, hungry to learn and receptive. I was pretty good at it. And it was a huge amount of fun.

Now, seven years later, I’ve taught writing at two different universities (one of which is the world’s best journalism school), earned a master’s degree and am in intensive job-hunting mode. I’ve applied to more than 35 places (it’s still relatively early in the process), had two interviews (one of which went extremely well and I’m waiting to hear if I’m still in the running) and have re-memorized the phone numbers of places I worked two decades ago. It may take a while to finally land a teaching job but I’m pretty optimistic. Job hunting is a distinctly unpleasant experience, but it is what it is and if I don’t do it actively a job won’t just fall into my lap.

And Lord, how I love teaching. Today’s college students get a bad rap for having been coddled their whole lives, but in my experience that’s unfair. Yes, they’re overly concerned about grades, but that’s because they’ll be graduating into an abysmal economy and entering a rapidly changing industry. There are things I was taught as an undergrad that now are of interest only to historians and there are things happening in the news business right now that will be happening in a totally different way by the time my students graduate.

But at both schools, I’ve been most impressed by how much the kids want to learn. The kids in the honors section here at Missouri are notorious for thinking they know everything, but since I’ve never taught an honors section I haven’t seen that personally. I can’t count the hours I’ve spent working one on one with kids to teach them how to craft a piece of writing and it’s deeply satisfying. There is no feeling in the world like working with a kid and suddenly seeing them get it. They glow, and it’s not just because a big old light bulb suddenly appeared over their head.

Of course, I was blessed with some great teachers myself. One was my college mentor and remains so to this day; I’ve tried to model my teaching after his. The other was exactly like Kingsfield in “The Paper Chase”; he scared the living hell out of everybody and brooked no halfhearted efforts. Unfortunately, he died before I could tell him how much he taught me.

I teach college, so 90 percent of my students walk into the classroom wanting to be there. The people who are miracle workers are those who teach high school and, especially, junior high. In junior high, even the best kid is often a bit of a turd; I think anybody who teaches eighth grade should be issued a whip and chair on the first day. But I know people that love teaching kids that age and the more they love it, generally, the better they are at it.

(Not that elementary school teachers are slackers, either; both of my kids went to Washington Elementary in Fargo and there literally is no other place on earth I would have rather sent them. A really amazing staff and a corporate culture focused on putting every single need of the kid first.)

I’m anticipating taking a lot of crap over being a college professor, because there are segments in this country that are deeply anti-intellectual and love to complain about teachers. Society loves to pay lip-service to the people who teach our kids, but get ahold of any school district pay scale sometime. If you judge the perception of peoples’ worth by how much they’re paid, it’s painfully obvious that we simply don’t give a damn about teachers in this country.

That’s not just sad and stupid and shortsighted. It’s dead wrong. We hand our kids over to these people every day, expect them to solve every problem and set our kids on the path to a happy life and then we pay them salaries that should deeply embarrass us. And to add insult to injury, we impose crap on them like No Child Left Behind, which only makes the job harder. Makes us feel like we’re doing something, though.

I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. In some ways we’re a very stupid, shortsighted country. The way we treat teachers is Exhibit A. And believe me, we will pay for that down the line and probably soon.

So, to my fellow teachers, I say: Good job. Some of us out here actually appreciate you. And we wish we could give you more than the occasional attaboy.