Visitor

I had a visitor in my class today. He was a business teacher from a small, private, religious school in our area. (I didn't realize that they had business there, but anyway.) They are a K-12 school, in the high school, they have about 17 students in each grade. (Wow! We have 700 in a grade.)

My students were taking a test today--ironic--it was a test over 1040 forms. So there wasn't much for him to see. However, we did talk about his classes and mine. He taught accounting, marketing, and all the computer classes. He was also a coach and in charge of all the technology for the school. (Another wow!) He has taught there for eight years, and was eager for information to help in his classes.

The most interesting observations he made were concerning how good our students are and how smoothly things went in our school. That was interesting to me, because I often think we are just organized chaos. However, the stereotype is that public schools are a jungle, and one needs to fear for his or her life just going near one. Fortunately, kids are kids, but most kids are really good kids.

I hope he has as much enthusiasm when he has worked as long as I have. I also hope that he can get a job in the public schools so that he can feed his family.