44. Teacher

Vince is my friend and colleague. He is part mad scientist and part genius. We team teach in a learning community - Vince in geology and me in photography (obviously). The cool part is with two people in control of the class you never end up where you think you are going. The experience has been amazing.

Today, Vince and I had a planning meeting about our class. Of course you put two teachers in proximity and they start to bitch about students. (If you put two students together they probably complain about their instructors.) Vince started with explaining that after 22 years of teaching he realizes there is always an abundance of ignorance, but never stupidity. Students just need to be cured of their stupidity. I mention that I loved his positive attitude, but I don't know if I completely agree. Vince had an answer for that - quantum physics. What?

Well it went something like this. There is a scientist Schrödinger and he had a theoretical experiment about a cat in a box and whether it is either dead or alive. Our perception (thought) about whether the cat was still alive was an important part to predicting its lively out come. That we could essentially change reality based on our own observation. It seemed to make perfect sense when Vince described it... but after I got home, not so much. And Wikipedia didn't seem to help much.  I think Oprah's "The Secret" is more on my comprehension level. But it all made sense when Vince was explaining it. That what makes the mad scientist part genius.

The bottom line? No matter how frustrated we get with the next generation of students, the mismanaged state budget, or education in general, with a positive attitude anything is possible, one atom at a time.