The best teaching starts with a good tale

I remember being intrigued by my high school Spanish teacher. She was eccentric and eclectic, to say the least. I think she may have been a hippie a generation too late, and the stories she told about her travels around the world captivated me. Hablo muy poco Español, but I will never forget sitting in her class, thinking to myself, “I want to have stories to tell like that!”

I guess through the years I have accumulated some decent adventures that have served me well in my classroom. My kids seem to like my little rabbit chases during lessons, and I’m naive enough to think it’s because my stories are interesting and not because they give my kids a distraction from Macbeth or Robert Frost.

I think relating classroom content to real life is a great thing. Most of my students have never been too far from their Columbus neighborhoods, so their perceptions of the world outside their zip code are skewed. They certainly have never walked through the gates of the Auschwitz they read about in Elie Wiesel’s Night or seen the last remnants of the Berlin Wall they studied in World History. Chances are, most of my kids may never see the real Notre Dame Cathedral from the Disney movie, or be moved by the massive size of the Michelangelo’s David.

So, toting into the classroom a load of experiences beyond our education degree is a powerful tool teachers use every day, and I can only imagine what stories Beth Badger shares with her classes over at the Woodall Center. Because … Mrs. Badger has been to jail! Several times, actually.

I got your attention the same way Mrs. Badger can using an introduction like that. And we teachers are quite efficient in using those types of attention-getters to reel in our audience of blurry-eyed students.

Captivating stories and unique experiences certainly can capture the attention of even the most resilient, cynical student, and I’m sure the experiences Mrs. Badger has visiting a local jail every week affords her many such stories. Once a teacher, always a teacher, and for most educators, teaching is an identity, not just a job. When the final bell rings, we don’t close our classroom doors and leave the lessons until the next day, and Mrs. Badger definitely proves that fact to be true.

We moonlight as tutors. We teach at local colleges. We help our own kids with their homework. Or we assist women in jail in achieving their GEDs. That’s what Mrs. Badger does. She visits the local jail on Thursday nights and tutors women in math.

But she also teaches West Coast Swing Dancing at a local recreation center. Now, I don’t even know what type of dancing that is, but it’s an obvious talent all of us don’t possess, and the teacher inside Mrs. Badger does what every teacher longs to do – give away the priceless gift of knowledge and experience.

Mrs. Badger also plays the bagpipe. I’m impressed and wordless about that hidden talent, because I can name on one finger how many people I know who can do that.

See, teachers aren’t just teachers. They aren’t 8 to 4 people who grab their paychecks and high-tail it out the door.

Teachers tend to be really neat people who have fun facts, hidden talents, and cool experiences that make them the perfect vessels to dispel knowledge to our children. And I, for one, would want a bagpipe-playing, swing-dancing, jail-visiting teacher teaching my kids. So, thanks for sharing with our kids, all you talented, quirky, eccentric, experienced teachers!

This story was originally published August 29, 2017 at 3:38 PM with the headline "The best teaching starts with a good tale."