(3): Prez and Me, or "Yo, Teach!"

Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost)

After I graduated high school, I started an ill-fated business degree at a university in the city. One semester later I had dropped out. I wasn't ready for it, I still had the pervading sense of 'done' my high school graduation had given me. I spent the next year-and-a-half working and then traveling - the idea was to take time and figure out what I wanted to do. When I got back from a six-month stay in Seattle I still wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to study, but despite that, on the eve of QTAC's final round of offers in 2009, I signed up for a double degree in Arts and Secondary Education.

The possibility of becoming a teacher had always been in the back of my mind, as far back as when I was in school. I had never seriously considered it until the night I signed up for it. What initially attracted me to teaching was that it was something I was already familiar with; I had been around teachers for a good percentage of my life, there wouldn't be too many nasty surprises. I also figured that I'd be able to study something I liked - the arts part of the degree - and would be able to apply it practically. In the next few weeks, while weighing pros and cons, worrying about whether or not I had made the right decision, I justified my choice with the extra holidays teachers get per year, the flexibility/opportunity for travel, the constant demand for teachers and therefore the ease in getting a job (apparently), and it's potential as a 'rewarding career'.

I've been obsessed with HBO's The Wire for most of the beginning of this year. It's hands-down the grittiest, most engaging and well written show I've ever come across, and as far as cop shows go, it makes Dexter look childish. In the fourth season, a character becomes a teacher after being shamed out of his previous job as a cop. This character - Prez (Jim True-Frost) - in past seasons, is a sort of fuck-up; one thoughtless mistake after another eventually leads to a fatal one and he's kicked out of the police. He works well as a teacher in the fourth season. Overcoming a lot of shit slung from his students and superiors, he manages to assert himself and find pleasure and motivation in his new job, while gaining the respect of most of his class. I know there's a world of difference between West Baltimore and the places I might be teaching, but watching the season was encouraging.

I have a lot of respect for teachers and for a lot of the 'pre-service teachers', as we're dubbed, in my course. I think teachers are undervalued, and from all accounts it sounds like they're underpaid too. After 2.25 years of my program, I've come to realise that there is a lot of stuff out of teachers' hands when it comes to educating their students, and sometimes it's overwhelming. I haven't done any prac yet, only ten days of observation, so I'm anxious about graduating and discovering that I fucking hate kids, or I don't have the patience, or the empathy, or the balls to deal with some of the students I'm bound to encounter. How the hell am I going to shake my predisposition for selfishness and put the needs of my students above myself? When I put my mind to it, I can think of a million ways it could go wrong, but at the same time, I honestly want to be able to be a good teacher.

This post is simply to justify that I've gained something from spending two days doing nothing but watching The Wire. Despite its grounding in fiction, the fourth season's education story-arch inspired some retrospection, and I'm glad I was a little trigger happy back in '09 with my QTAC preferences. Rough seas are to be expected for my initial years but hopefully it'll make itself worth it. Next time I'm having doubts I'll just think of Prez... or watch Freedom Writers, or some shit.