EducationNews.org

By Steven W. Simpson, Ph.D.
Guest Columnist EdNews.org

This job is so weird that it is impossible to explain it to normal people. Really, the things that happen make you wonder if the Greeks and Romans had it right. Maybe the gods really are sitting up there amusing themselves by making bizarre things happen to teachers. It would not surprise me, at least not after what happened last week.

There I was, minding my own business in my own classroom. The school secretary calls and asks me if I will cover a class for the teacher across the hall. Sure, I say in my monumental ignorance. No problem.

Fifth period I go across the hall and look around for some kind of lesson plan. I see a plan for first, fourth and sixth, but nothing for the class I am covering. Great. So I look around the room and see that they do journal entries. This is good, I think, as 30 ninth graders come pouring in the door. I will need the time.

I tell the kids to get their journals out as I write on the board, “If you had to be stranded on a deserted island for a year, which three people would you want with you?” Now this is kind of lame, but I only had about 30 seconds and it has worked in the past. It buys me the ten minutes I need to figure something out for the rest of this class period.

So, I am thinking about what to do and who pops into my head but Bear Grylls. This guy is one of my secret weaknesses. He is a survival expert who has a television show on the Discovery Channel called Man vs. Wild. Each week old Bear gets dropped off somewhere horrible and using a variety of amazing survival tricks, he works his way out of the wilderness and back to civilization. I love this show and watch every episode. Well, not exactly every episode. And that, my friends, is where this story begins. Remember that old rule that says never show students a video you have not previewed? I can tell you that there is a good reason for that rule.
There I am, watching those 30 restless ninth graders finishing their journal entries, knowing I have about a minute and a half to figure something out or chaos will take over this classroom. I think about Bear and decide that this week old Bear is going to save me. I ask the kids if any of them picked Bear as one of the three people they would want on the island with them. Two or three students wave their hands wildly, obviously being Bear fans like me. The rest of the kids don’t know who Bear is. So, in my state of temporary madness, I suggest that we pull up Bear’s Web site and watch some video clips from his adventures.

This will be great, I think. It fits well with the journal entry, it is exciting and cool, it will last about the right amount of time, and the kids may actually learn something useful about survival. So I pull up Bear’s Web site and there are about six small thumbnail photos from different video clips. I see one about falling through the ice into freezing cold water. We live in the Northwest, I think. This could actually happen to one of these kids. Let’s watch this one. Can you hear the gods laughing?

Old Bear is standing in the snow next to a little frozen pond. He jumps in the water and talks about hypothermia while he is getting hypothermia. Then, he pulls himself out of the water and begins his usual series of survival tricks. Now I have watched a bunch of his shows and he always does the same thing. He figures out how to get shelter, food, heat and safety. This is going to be good, I think. Then, old Bear begins taking his clothes off. I have watched a dozen of his shows, and this is the only one I have ever watched in which he takes off his clothes.

No problem, I think stupidly. This is public television. His clothes are wet. This makes sense. No real problem. Then, faster than I can get to the projector remote, old Bear strips down to his British flag design boxers, and you guessed it, off they go and old Bear is standing there in front of 30 ninth grade students naked as the day that little rascal was born.

To be fair, they did fuzz out the most delicate parts of Bear’s anatomy, but that really did not make any difference. That man was standing in front of that class just as naked as he could be and I put him there. The kids went nuts. It was one of those classroom moments that make this job what it really is- chaos interspersed with moments of total madness. What to do?
Well, I think, it’s too late now. May as well stick it out and hope old Bear does something that can justify a naked ice diver in a ninth grade classroom. So he finishes putting on dry clothes, building a fire, making everything OK. I act like it is completely normal for the kids to watch naked men walking around on snow. “Let’s watch one from the mountains” I suggest. You know, one that I have actually seen. One where old Bear keeps his clothes on.

The next day, that teacher stops me in the hall and tells me the kids said I was showing them videos of naked people. Lucky for me she is an experienced teacher and was not too concerned. I explained what happened and she thought it was very funny. Not me. I am now imagining about a dozen parents calling my principal and asking why a teacher is showing videos of naked people to their children.

So I mosey on down the hall and have a short and embarrassing talk with my principal. She watches the clip of Bear taking off his clothes and then starts laughing. Very funny, I think. I like teaching. I don’t really want to have a short and painful talk with our superintendent and then have to go find work someplace where they do not have the Internet and projectors. Still, it was kind of funny. The principal tells me not to worry. After all, she notes, all you did was show the kids public television.

Sure. I am going to write Bear a letter. If he really wants me to survive, he needs to keep his clothes on. And like my good friend Dave Barry says, “I am not making this up.”

Published March 4, 2007