What Do You Do for Work?

One day, as I passed by a student’s desk in my 5th grade classroom, he looked up and asked, "Mr. Singer, what do you do for work?"




Taken off guard, I replied, "I'm here five days a week, all day."


"I know," he nodded. "But what do you do for work?"


The question itself wasn't all that remarkable, I suppose. I was at a meeting that included a board of education member saying, "You people just sit at a desk all day." I should have retorted what I was thinking then: Yeah, sure, with six of my students already on the police blotter.

Sixth graders wtih Bert at Madison Elementary School. Pasadena, CA.

The real humor of this boy's question was that he almost never got an assignment turned in on time. When the kids lined up, he was always near the end. I overheard a girl saying to him, "Don't you ever do anything? You don't even run to first base."


What I "do for work," young man is apply for summer jobs. They're easier.


G. B. Shaw was cited as saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."


He must have been a school board member and never entered a classroom. In nearly thirty years of classroom teaching a school board member entered my classroom exactly once. That was unannounced, and he was ticked that I ignored him. He was the member who contended that students needed only three books: a speller, a reader, and an arithmetic book. He never said at what levels.