Arizona English Teachers Association Connections Newsletter WINTER 2010 “Celebrating the Old Time English Teacher” (p. 15) Perhaps representing an increasingly diminishing population, the Old Time English Teacher [OTET] is evidenced by good works, concern for students, and commitment to academic excellence and prosperity. Far from the Madding crowd, they are Stewards first, and leaders when called… Generally their eyesight is good, their social skills are good, and they are unafraid of the light—both physical and figurative. You will find them in offices visiting with students, or in virtual classrooms, or chatting electronically, or reading journals, magazines, or other Texts relevant to their academic lives. You will likely see them wearing clean cotton slacks, or conservative suits, and socially appropriate—but not ostentatious or pointedly corporate-- attire—in the work place. Both male and female, they are happy, adjusted, and enjoy coming to work and seeing students and coworkers. On Saturdays, you might find an OTET at home, curled up in a comfortable old Lazy boy chair, sipping cinnamon tea or a Starbucks coffee, leafing through a tired, dogeared old Riverside Shakespeare… They are part of the strange, shrinking, almost invisible group of faculty who operate at a very different level than the fast track, upwardly mobile, New Time All Purpose Teachers [NTAPT’s]. In any gathering of zealous NTAPT’s, you might yet see an OTET or two, quietly reflecting, considering the day’s work to be completed, making marginalia entries in an old book, planning for a balanced intellectual future, distant and hopefully wholesome, patient but skeptical. Oh, you might recognize the OTET’s attributes, their traits, their unassuming and seemingly un-seemly habits. They want to be teachers—not managers, consultants, or administrators. The OTET’s frustration may, at times, be manifested in misperceived grumpiness, or stoic stares, or silence. You will rarely see them standing in hallways, or in someone else’s office, overtly excited about becoming a Principal or a Dean, or retiring in six years, or outspokenly vexed at the costs of a new online program in Ed. leadership… or fearful of what’s coming down from the district office. They simply enjoy their teaching lives and students. They have confidence—the confidence that comes from academic immersion, from thinking, from listening, from reading, from helping their students [and themselves!] move forward [in not just a material sense] in life… An OTET will happily answer student questions about To Kill a Mockingbird, or Chekhov, or participles, or semicolons—off the cuff—because she is well read, she is focused, and she is not fully immersed in the numbing aspects of pop culture or meeting speak… Her world is focused on learning about the “Other”-- other times, other places, other ideas, other subjects, other cultures, other explanations, other views—not about her “self” and a harried future latched to longer commutes and board meeting speeches… For her, knowledge and focus constitute true career growth…. Perhaps the powerful, simmering, and [sometimes] misplaced organizational management energy [to be found districts- wide] has made OTET’s overly sensitive to day-to-day school machinations and gymnastics. OTET’s might love the internet and the positive aspects of on line learning—but seldom sit in an Ikea-forced chair, or rush outside the classroom to send a Text. They have embraced teaching-learning processes enhanced by technology but avoid its potentially mesmerizing side-effects—they understand that accessing information is not the same as knowledge and awareness... The OTET’s enjoy professional conferences—local, regional, and national— centered on literature, language, and teaching, since the OTET’s connect their present and future career lives with the teaching profession... If you know an OTET, give him a hug today. You will see fewer and fewer of the species. [Those jackets with the elbow patches and meerschaum pipes have really gone out of style!] Jeffrey Ross, OTET, Central Arizona College