By Josh Beavers
Johnny Rowland asked me a question during my interview that I’ve thought about for a long time.
“Are you sure?”
I understood why he asked. I’d spent 15 years in the newspaper business, and by the end I was publishing two papers and running a print shop with more than 40 people on the payroll. I had never stood in front of a classroom. I barely knew the man across the desk, and he had every reason to pass on a burned-out newspaperman looking for a second act.
He also warned me I’d miss adult conversation.
I told him I was sure, though I had my doubts. Newspapers were dying, and I’d stopped finding meaning in the work long before I admitted it to anyone. What I did know was that I wanted to spend the rest of my working life doing something that mattered.
The reason I was in that office at all was Becky Wilson. Becky taught in room 316 at Lakeside before me, and when she moved on, she put in more good words for me than I probably deserved. She became assistant principal at Minden High and later principal. She earned her doctorate. Today she’s the district’s personnel director. Only two teachers have called room 316 home in more than two decades, and I’m the second.
Rowland hired me, and the first ten weeks were awful.
I second-guessed myself every day. I spent a lot of nights wondering if I’d walked away from a good career for nothing. Somewhere in there, I worked up the nerve to ask him how he thought I was doing.
He said he couldn’t be happier and that it would get easier. Then he told me I cared, and that caring was the most important thing a teacher could bring into a classroom.
I’ve leaned on that more times than I can count.
He was right about it getting easier. He missed on the adult conversation, though. I’d take a room full of juniors and seniors over most grown-up small talk. After 15 years in business, I got used to every conversation having an angle, and I had plenty of my own. That part of adult life didn’t end when I left. I still talk to grown folks every day who are working me for something, and some of them make it pretty obvious they think I’m too dumb to notice.
Kids don’t work that way. When a senior talks to me, they aren’t after anything. They haven’t been beaten down by the world yet. They still believe they can do something big, and part of my job is keeping that alive. Sophomores are another story. A few of them still make me wonder about my career choice.
I couldn’t give you a confident definition of a direct object, and some English teachers would find that alarming. I’ve made peace with it. What I care about is whether a kid can read something hard and understand it, and whether that kid can write and speak clearly enough to be taken seriously. Rowland hired me because he thought I’d care, and he told me that was enough.
The faculty at Lakeside has turned over completely since I walked in. I’m now the longest-serving teacher on campus. Wilhelm Gray is in admin now, so he doesn’t count. Twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of college call me “sir,” which took some getting used to. Some of them have the same look I had during those first ten weeks.
Rowland recently told the school board he’s retiring, effective Dec. 20. He’s given more than 30 years to this parish’s schools, the last 10 as superintendent.
“I’ve made mistakes,” he told the board, “but my intent has always been to help the students, teachers and employees.”
Whatever the mistakes were, I know about the intent. I’m one of the people it helped.
Short of death, I plan to be in room 316 for the next 15 years. At some point, one of those young teachers down the hall is going to stop me and ask how I think they’re doing. I already know what I’ll say. I learned it from him.
Josh Beavers is an award-winning columnist who earned four Best Columnist awards from the Louisiana Press Association. He traded the newsroom for the classroom in 2013, convinced that teaching young people to write, to think, and to become productive members of their community was the more important work.