Sunday, July 13, 2008

Poor Man's Celebrity

I haven't been a teacher for long but one thing that I realized quite quickly was that I am now a celebrity. Everywhere I go I now have my own little following that could pop up at any time. I realize that as I teach for a longer time the following is just going to get bigger. Everywhere I go will be "hey Mr. Rowley," or "hey Coach," or my favorite "what are you doing here?"

You know you look at different professions and some make you celebrities while most don't. In one's job one deals with maybe 30 different people on a personal level on a daily basis (that's being generous). In my job I deal with 240+ on a daily basis, and every year I get a new 240+. That is not even taking into consideration that 240+'s parents that I deal with periodically through out the year. Just say I have 240 students times 1.5 parents (you don't always meet or deal with both) times 30 years in this area and I will be known by about 18,000 people. That doesn't include co-workers and other teachers/coaches from other schools that I get to know.

Professional Athlete= Celebrity
Movie Star= Celebrity
Teacher= Celebrity

Most kids dream of growing up to be rich and famous, well, half of that is the reality of a teacher, too bad its not the rich one. Eat your heart out Brittney Spears, I got famous without selling my soul.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Introduction

Since this is my first post on this blog, maybe I should introduce myself a little bit. I am about to start my second year teaching World History and World Geography in a very affluent part of Utah. My kids are so rich that when I talk about any part of the world inevitably someone in one of my classes has been there. It blew my mind last year when we started talking about Africa and I had four kids that had been there, and they are just 14-15 years old.

I am writing this blog because I observe in my school and in my class some very comical and interesting things. I guess that should be obvious because I teach Freshmen. They think that they have figured themselves out, but clearly they have not, and that can be really funny. So in future posts you will get to read my musings, observations, and stories.