Mr. Reingold's Room

I have had this idea in my head for a long time, and I have avoided writing it until now. I’ve been feeling it’s premature to put it down and put it out. But now I am starting to realize that this idea will evolve over time. Or maybe I’ll just be expressing it differently. There’s no reason to hold off. I’ve had a calling to be a teacher all my life. Sometimes I forget it, because I thought the profession seemed out of reach for me. Or I avoided it because I feared I wouldn’t be able to stand it. My beloved spouse tells me that I have always said I wanted to be a teacher, even though I don’t remember telling her every year. She assures me I do. My beloved father, may he rest in peace, said that teaching is the noblest profession, especially when the teacher is a scholar. He thought he would have been happiest if he had been a History teacher. His most inspiring teacher was a History teacher he had in high school. Dad went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn and graduated in app...

  I've been tutoring in various ways to gain the skills to teach. One of my employers has given me two placements. One is assisting in a 3rd grade classroom at a school in East Harlem. The other is helping 7th graders prepare for the SHSAT, an entrance exam that a small group of public high schools in New York City use. The 7th graders all attend a middle school in Queens. The 7th grade work is remote, so I meet with small groups of students after school over video conference. I turn my camera on briefly so they can see me, and then I turn it off to conserve bandwidth. There is only one student who chooses to turn his camera on. The others never do, and some are even reluctant to turn their microphones on. It's a difficult medium, but many teachers and students have learned to deal with it, and now some prefer it. The exam is in English and Math, and I never thought of myself as a good English student, but interestingly, I find I have things to say about the material. I guess I...