Watching the clock: Make it to the end of the year without messing up

I feel like I am holding my breath, always.

Last spring, I worked the clock at my son’s basketball game. It is a town league, midseason, nothing-on-the-line Sunday afternoon game with two teams of 8th-grade boys. We are in a borrowed school gym with nice hardwood floors and mostly empty bleachers. The spectators are all parents, most of whom are on their phones. A few brought laptops.

The console I use to control the clock and the scoreboard is an intimidating-looking two-foot-long grey industrial box with lots of buttons, but I have been instructed that I don’t need to know what most of them do. There is one button to stop and start the clock. There are three scoring buttons on each side so I can add one, two, or three points. You press start when the referee makes the hand signal. You press stop when the whistle blows. You record the score. That’s it. If you want to get fancy, you can keep track of fouls or the quarters. I do not want to get fancy. I just don’t want to screw up.

The main reason I hate being the clock guy is that the best-case scenario is that I don’t make a mistake. If all goes well, nobody cares. It isn’t something I get congratulations for — and I shouldn’t. It is an easy task that belongs in the background. I am not playing basketball or even coaching or reffing. I am just sitting there pushing a button, hoping I get to the end of the game without having made any mistakes.

It’s easy to find oneself feeling the same way about teaching. I came close to it last year when I started at a new school. Although I was hired as a math coach, I agreed to cover for a paternity leave beginning in February. I thought that having an experienced teacher like me in the class for a few weeks would be better for the kids than bringing in a sub. Plus, I thought it would help integrate me into the department. Most of all, it would give me a chance to be in the classroom again, which I’ve missed. Unfortunately, it did not turn out like I hoped. A few weeks in, I found that instead of modeling great teaching practices and providing my colleagues with the benefits of my 20-plus years of experience, I was hoping to avoid disaster. I told myself I just had to make it through another few weeks without too many people complaining about me or wondering why they hired me. Instead of trying to do well, I tried to not do badly, which is not the same thing.

Being a beginner

It is a little difficult to figure out what went wrong. Maybe, after four years away from the classroom, I’d gotten a little rusty. And, as friends pointed out, maybe it was just a really awkward situation. I was temporarily covering for a popular teacher who’s been teaching these courses for years. Subbing for someone good always means being subject to unfair comparisons. He had months to get to know the students, teach them how to be in his class, set all the expectations. I was walking into a class that had been together since September to teach a topic I’d never taught before. The first time through is always a little rough.

Instead of trying to do well, I tried to not do badly, which is not the same thing.

But I suspect that there is more to it than that. I had 20 years of experience — but not at this school. The parents, the students, and the faculty didn’t know me and had never seen me teach. Yet, as the math coach, I presumably knew what I was doing, so they weren’t likely to grant me a gentle learning curve.

About two years ago, I started studying tai chi. For someone with serious spatial issues and poor body awareness, tai chi is a challenge. The style of teaching at the martial arts center is relaxed. There are no formal classes. People of all levels of experience do the form together. If you are new, a teacher will walk you through it and help you, but once you have the basics, most of what you do in the session is practice. Which means that on any given day, I may be practicing right next to people who have been studying for many years and have black belts in other martial arts.

As I’ve practiced side-by-side with those who are more experienced, I’ve noticed that when a teacher or an experienced student goofs and turns the wrong way or forgets to do the third cloud hands, they will smile and move on. No one is embarrassed — it is something that happens. When I do the same thing, however, I feel like I don’t belong there. I have to remind myself that I am still learning, but I feel ashamed that I’ve made a mistake, even though no one ever says anything. The truth is that they probably haven’t even noticed — most people are not paying attention to anyone else — and even if they did notice, they would totally understand.

The difference between a master making a small mistake and a novice making the same mistake feels significant. For the master, it is a momentary oops because everyone knows that they really can do the form well. For the novice, it is (yet another) sign that they have not yet reached a level of competence. When I took over these math classes in February, I was, despite my experience, a novice. I had assumed I would feel like a master, but I didn’t. I had not yet earned the trust of these students or this community, so I was very aware of my mistakes — and that probably means I made more of them. Focusing on avoiding mistakes is rarely a successful teaching strategy.

When mistakes happen

A few weeks into my assignment, I gave my 8th graders a test that I spent many hours constructing. I matched each of the goals with a question at the right level of challenge, and each question required some level of mastery of a particular skill we are studying. I used previous versions of tests from other teachers, so I was roughly in line with the style and content of the department. I made sure the test was substantial but easily completable within the class period. I tried really hard to construct a focused, accessible assessment.

But about halfway through the period I noticed that everyone was working really hard on question eight. Question eight was supposed to be challenging, but not this challenging. When I checked a copy of the test, the question looked slightly different than I remembered. Had I made a typo? I told the students to finish up what they could of that question and warned them that there might have been a typo. There was an eruption of chaos in the room. Stressed-out honor students were now very stressed out. How was I going to score it? What if they did finish the whole question but got the wrong answer? How could there be a typo on the test?

There could be a typo on the test because I am a human being and I make mistakes. Especially typos. I know what my strengths are as a teacher. I can produce a lot of material so kids have choices and multiple opportunities to practice and explore interesting ideas. In my first few weeks of covering these classes, I had produced 36 slideshows and well over 100 documents — not including the problems I took from other sources. I am prolific. I am not, however, a great proofreader.

The consequence of risk-taking is that not everything that will happen in my class will be amazing.

And here is where it matters. In a situation where I am seen as an experienced master teacher, a typo is a typo. No big deal. When I have not yet earned trust, a typo is a sign that I am not competent. Students who are trying hard have reason to complain to their parents and their adviser and anyone else who will listen. And everyone involved will, understandably, see this as evidence that I am a careless teacher who routinely hands out tests with typos. This is, after all, the one piece of evidence they will have about who I am as a teacher.

What kind of teacher am I?

The consequence of risk-taking is that not everything that will happen in my class will be amazing. There will be discussions that fall flat and projects with unforeseen faults — such as a meticulously crafted test with a typo. I have to decide if I’m willing to accept those risks, or if I just want to work the clock and get to the end of the game without messing up. As a sub, I could have just watched the clock. No one asked me to try to rewrite the test to better fit this particular set of students. No one asked me to produce so much paper or make so many slideshows. I could have easily assigned homework, gone over it in class, given the next assignment. If that is what I did, no one would have complained. But I think the consequences would have been worse than a simple typo.

I would like my classes to be places where students are not constantly worried that any error will sink them. I want them to be places where they try new things and take risks. I want them to be able to make mistakes. If I don’t have that mindset about myself, there is no way they will have it about themselves.

Back at the game, the seconds tick down. The game ends. We are only part way through the season, and I will probably be asked to work the clock again. And I probably will. But while not screwing up might be the standard for working the clock at a low-stakes basketball game, it can’t be my standard for teaching. In my classroom, I need to do more than playing it safe and avoiding mistakes. I would like to be better than just good enough.

This article appears in the November 2021 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 3, pp. 58-59.