My wife and I took an anniversary trip to New York City last week – I’ll be writing more about it later this week – and one of the very briefest of events got me thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We passed two men dressed in what looked like Hassidic Jewish garb – except they were wearing T-shirts. The shirts read: “I am a non-fungible teacher.” My wife and I both thought, initially, that it meant they taught people about NFT’s – non-fungible tokens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that, it turns out, is not what it meant. I gave it a little more thought and looked up the meaning of fungible<\/em> just to be sure. Fungible, it turns out, means “able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable.” So non-fungible<\/em> means irreplaceable, unique. When it comes to online NFT’s, I’m not a fan. Producing these “cryptographic assets” and making them unique enough to be non-fungible takes massive amounts of energy, which is bad for the environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, all it takes to be an Non-Fungible Teacher NFT is to be a unique teacher. All that takes is a life story that leads you into teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I like this T-shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because what the system seems to want is fungible teachers: easily replaced, easily duplicated. Standardized. Heck, they tried to replace us with Edgenuity videos when the pandemic started in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But I am not easily duplicated. I can pass on some of the strategies I’ve developed to other teachers, but that doesn’t mean they will become copies of me. And I wouldn’t want them to be. I want other teachers to be unique, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes me non-fungible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My childhood. I grew up in an alcoholic household and had to deal with some things growing up. I know what it is like to deal with school while you’re dealing with homelife problems. A school counselor friend recently introduced me to the ACE quiz that rates you on a scale of 10 for “Adverse Childhood Experiences”. I discovered that I rated a 7. I had no idea. But I believe I have managed to come out of the experiences intact. This is something I bring to the classroom. It informs how I deal with my students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My creativity. I am not famous. I am not wildly financially successful. But my creativity is one of the things that helped me get through a somewhat troubled childhood. I wrote novels. I tried to make a movie. I wrote a musical and staged it. As an adult, I have written a musical, a full-length play, over 6,000 comic strips, a four YA novels and an adult novel that I still to get published. All of that informs what I do as an English and Creative Writing teacher. Every time I have trouble getting students to do something (go beyond the five paragraph essay, write fluent sentences, end fictional stories well, write using word pictures, etc.) I come up with a way to teach them to do it. I would go so far as to say that this is what teaching IS: finding ways to take students from where they are to where you want them to be. I am always trying to find new ways to reach and teach students, to take them on a journey, to help them see the world in new ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My mindset. I am curious. I am enthusiastic. I care. I have a strong sense of wonder. A am capable of seeing multiple points of view. I am open to new evidence and willing to change my mind. I am willing to entertain ambiguity. I am comfortable with uncertainty. I am willing to admit what I don’t know. I have ideas and values that I feel certain of. I try to be a model of intellectual health. Am I always? Of course not. No one is. But I try my best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My reading life. I read. I tend to read around 50 books a year. I read fiction in many genres. I read comics. I read non-fiction books: history books, history of education books, how-to education books, psychology books, philosophy books, theology books, art books, creativity books. I read… a lot. And re-read. This is how I model a literate life. It is also where I get a lot my ideas for teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My writing life. I write comic strips, blogs, novels, graphic novels, plays, poems, song lyrics, op-eds, and non-fiction books. I sometimes feel like I write like I’m running out of time (though I’ve already outlived Alexander Hamilton – whose grave we visited whilst in NYC!). I struggle with my writing, so I know how my students struggle. I have the inside view of writing. I am able to look at my own process and apply to what my students are doing. I am a model of an adult who creates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My acting. I have been acting on stage at least once a year since 1985. (I even did an online play in 2021 since theaters were closed!) I have played (among other parts) Linus Van Pelt in You’re a Good Man, Cha<\/em>rlie Brown<\/em>, Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey<\/em>, Harold Hill in The Music Man<\/em>, and the Pharoah (as Elvis!) in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat<\/em>. My theater experience makes me a good read-aloud person. It gives me presence in the classroom. Teaching is, at least a good portion of the time, performative. My theater experience helps me perform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My experience as a cartooning teacher and summer camp counselor. I started my teaching career while I was still in high school, teaching cartooning in the Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS) in Upstate New York. I learned early on about to engage students, how to pass on what I have learned, and how to generate enthusiasm. As a summer camp counselor I learned how to relate to kids – and how to take any situation and sort of turn it into a game. I led songs, led hikes, led storytelling and discussion around the campfire. I learned how to lead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My willingness to change and grow. When I started teaching, I tried to implement discipline as I had been instructed to do. Now I don’t really have rules. I have excellent behavior most of the time without being rule-based and haven’t written a referral in years. When I started teaching writing, I taught the five paragraph essay. I gave that up early on and haven’t taught it for years. I started out giving textbook questions to answer after reading. I haven’t done that for years: my reading assignments are very open-ended – I try to show students what should be going on in your head if you are an engaged reader. I used to use rubrics to grade writing. I avoid them now and try to make feedback about writing a dialogue. I have used traditional grades for 30 years. In the past five years I have begun to realize how much grades keep the focus on points and not on learning. I am currently reading up on how to change my grading practices to encourage learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My reliance on literacy. Reading and writing have saved my life and given in meaning over and over again. Reading and writing bring meaning to my life. I want to pass that on. It’s a better motivator than higher test scores. I have had to ask big question in my life – about happiness, success, power, and education itself. My sense of what questions to ask and how to find answers informs the way I frame what we do in the classroom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My fatherhood. My children are in their twenties now. They are both doing well. I have no regrets about their childhoods. I played with them, talked with them, created with them. I read to them. A LOT. By any possible measure, they turned out… smart. I have a sense of what investments pay off in terms of literacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am unique. Why would you WANT to standardize me? Why would you want to turn me into a copy of every other teacher? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am a non-fungible teacher. I need to get that T-Shirt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are a teacher, what makes you non-fungible? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My wife and I took an anniversary trip to New York City last week – I’ll be writing more about it later this week – and one of the very briefest of events got me thinking. We passed two men dressed in what looked like Hassidic Jewish garb – except they were wearing T-shirts. 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