This looks like a job for Superman!

This probably should have been my first post. I named this blog I could be Superman for a number of reasons.

1) I have always loved superheros and everything they stand for. I see the strengthen in them, the ability to put others first no matter what. To give up their own lives sometimes for the sake of other people. And I think sometimes, we forget that side of the superheroes. It gets to be so easy to view them as a ritzy jack*** (I am looking at you, Ironman) or the same old rich kid with no parents tune we have been hearing for years. Sometimes, I think it is important to think about what is beneath that. That these men (and women) give up their lives, they put their families on the line for the sake of some black silhouette of a person they don't know.

2) Waiting for Superman. I won't lie and say I saw the movie before starting this blog. That's a lie. (Though I finally did have the courage to watch that movie) but I did specifically say I could be Superman because of that movie. Not because of anything the movie said, not because of anything the movie didn't say. Just the title. That's it. It's exactly how I feel about education, it seems like we are waiting for some super famous amazing fairy godmother character to come in with a magic wand and fix education. No one is stepping up. And we could, we all could. I could. I have said this for months. If I knew who to contact at least to shoot down my ideas if nothing else, I would call them up. But even I, I could at least attempt to fix the education system. If I tried something different enough, maybe it would get better. If it didn't? It sure can't get any worse. Maybe YOU could fix education and make it the kind that makes students think.

3) We have super powers. Superman wasn't some rich man. He didn't have lots of degrees. I mean he had superpowers but don't we? Teachers have a special way of being exactly what a classroom needs and changing it on the spin of the dime if it needs changing. We know how to wrap students around information, we know how to push their questions out of them, we know how to make those "Ah-hah!" moments happen. If you threw Joe Shmoe into the classroom, he wouldn't be able to do these things. We chose this because we can do it.

4) And we are up to the challenge. We sit here waiting for the moment that we can teach how we should be teaching, when we can do what we should be doing. We are stuck in the ways of the world and we ourselves are broken. We stopped asking "Why", we stopped experimenting with our own jobs. We like the money, we like the job security but we are the ones that are supposed to be up to the challenge and save the people that we don't even know yet.

Those are your kids, your future students, your current students, the people that question your job, the people that belittle your work. We need to save them because if we don't? No one else will.

We can be the Champion of the Oppressed. We stand for truth, justice and the American way.

We can be Superman. Up, up and away!




“You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, yet everyday I hear people crying out for one.” 
― Superman Returns 2006