Here Comes the Boom - Ben Slavic

I saw the movie Here Comes the Boom with Kevin James and Henry Winkler this weekend. I recommend it. A 42 year old biology teacher (James) tries to save his music teacher colleague’s job by becoming a cage/mixed martial arts fighter to make up for a school budget crisis.

I view the film as a metaphor. While strong forces of greed and self interest oppose him, forces that he is not even aware of, James tries to prevail by literally knocking himself out for his students. But his colleague (Winkler), at one crucial point, when all seems lost, tells him that he’s already won just by fighting against outrageous opposition.

His colleague told him that his job as a teacher is to inspire his students and, by fighting on behalf of his students, he has done that – he has done and is doing all he could be expected to in the setting he is in.

That idea stuck with me. It seems as if we are all daily trying too hard to make things happen in our classrooms against huge opposition. We try so hard to prevail. But are we not winning just by showing up? I really believe that we are. For thirty-four full time and now two part time years, I have spent Sunday nights in a kind of funk, dreading the coming week of instruction.

I didn’t ever feel good enough. I thought that if I just figured it all out and brought it into my instruction I would feel better, that things would fall into place and then I would enjoy my job. But I’m not sure now that that is possible, especially now as the situation in schools spins further and further out of control no matter how much money is thrown at it.

I just need to accept my efforts as enough just by showing up for work all those years and by wanting to inspire my students, whatever the results. Just wanting to inspire them is enough. I was doing enough just by trying. It may be the biggest lesson of my career, and I am thankful for this movie bringing this key thought back into my awareness as I wind it all down.

There is no one out there who expects us to be perfect in our jobs, or to be perfect in life, and if we are pressuring ourselves, here on another Sunday night, after a vacation no less, to be something we are not, then we need to rethink that. We’re doing just fine.

There are many layers to the comprehensible input onion and to teaching in general. At least we don’t teach in the old way – in the elitist memorization (sic) way. All we have to do is show up again tomorrow on another Monday and do our best to maybe listen to our kids’ cute answers to our questions a little better.

All we can do is do our best to slow down a bit more – knowing that perfection doesn’t exist in this profession and in this approach to teaching – while doing our best to remember to get choral yes/no answers if we think about it, and do our best to personalize our instruction, and accept our circling as good enough. We don’t have to be perfect this week. All we have to do is try. We’re doing fine.