Teaching - The Root of Society
- Aubrey Johnson
- Mar 23
- 10 min read
I am only in my late 30s. I say “only” because while it’s old according to my students - I’m older than many of their parents, after all - I am still relatively young with a lot of life to live. However, in the years of experience I have had, I have taught approximately 1,520 students. Those students were across every grade level (Pre-K through 12th) in 10 schools, eight districts, five states, and four subjects - English Language Arts, science, culinary arts, and farm to school (food system lessons). According to research conducted by Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology, “there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.” He determined that number to be about 150 people whose names and faces can be recalled from memory (Chalabi, 2015). Try to exceed that, and someone has to be cut. Sometimes, it’s not who it should be, either. And the ones you don’t mind forgetting… they’re cemented.
None of my students were my “friends;” that was a firm line to not cross. When I first started subbing and I taught students I knew previously from the church youth group where I served, I remember a piece of advice from the youth pastor’s wife, who was also a school attendance secretary. She said to be “firm but nice,” and there is a difference between being “friendly” and “friends.” My students were not my friends, but according to Dunbar’s criteria, they would be considered acquaintances since I interacted with them almost daily. Learning their names took a while. Some had more memorable faces and personalities than others, but during the time I taught them, I learned each one. (Learning all 160 names for my first long-term sub gig at 23 years old was certainly a challenge. Seating charts with pictures are a blessing!) Now, years removed from some of those 1,520 students, not all are as memorable. I forget students that told me I was their favorite teacher years ago, but I remember other students that probably considered me one of their least favorites. I can tell you the first and last names of two students from 12 and 13 years ago who did not rank among my favorites - yes, teachers have them, shhhh! Both were boys raised by grandmothers. Both wanted to stand out among their peers as class clowns who distracted their classmates from my teaching. I taught two girls who were pregnant, one as a sophomore and one as a senior trying to pass a freshman-level course. Their babies would be 15 and 13 by now. I taught one girl who was in love with One Direction. (Well, there could have been more, but this girl made it clear.) She felt the need to share her epiphany that they were real people who do, in fact, poop. I taught one 7th grader who asked me why he had to learn about his body since he’d “rather it remain a mystery.” He would be about 23 now, and hopefully, his body is less mysterious!
I have only heard from or about a small fraction of my students after they left my classroom. Some went on to graduate as valedictorian or went to prestigious colleges. Some started a career in science. Some are married and are parents now. But as to most of my previous students, I don’t know… did they mature, outgrow their need to be the center of attention, clean up their language of profanity? Did my farm-to-school kids keep cooking, teach their parents about compost (one student this year did!), or plant a garden of their own? Did any of the kids from the Mock Trial club I co-sponsored go on to study law? Did they all become productive members of society or are they on their way to being one? I wonder if any of them joined the military - whether they followed a parent's footsteps, thought they had no other choice if college was not an option, or chose to serve out of their own sense of duty.
Teaching is a long game. There is no instant gratification or project completion. Your output is in the form of your students’ knowledge and life skills, but there is no completion date. Even after graduation, teachers hope their students continue to learn and succeed. A teacher pours one’s self - both heart and head knowledge - into a group of students for a year, then those students leave. Teachers who choose to stay at one school for a while can see their previous students graduate, follow them for a bit if they teach a lower grade in one district. But since I moved several times, I don’t have that luxury. This is the first time I’ve taught at the same school for three consecutive years, and now I know students in all three grades - 6th, 7th, and 8th. Maybe I will see some of them graduate in a few years. If I don’t, that doesn’t mean that I give less of myself since I don’t know to what end my teaching will lead. I still want the best for my students, even if I don’t see that “best” come to fruition. I pray that none of my students ended up on the wrong side of the law. I pray all of my students are healthy and well. Statistics may say otherwise, but I can hope for the best.
If you’ve ever wondered if your teachers remember you, well, it depends. Some do, and some may not. But you still mattered to that teacher. I remember some students from their questions and stories. (No, 7th grader… if a field has a bunch of rabbits and they eat a lot of carrots, they will not turn into one giant rabbit.) Some students were thoughtful in funny or unexpected ways. (One girl wanted to have a going-away lunch for me when I told them I would not return to the school the next year. Parents brought food for me to enjoy with my students on the last day of school. I specifically remember fried chicken and collard greens.) I remember one student whom I taught for two years in a row, first for science and then for ELA. He was quieter, an average student, so not high academically, but he was kind. Most days, he chatted with me while I walked his class to lunch. He told me about his swimming competitions, his dad’s job in the military, and his family and their moves around the country. He went through a phase where he asked me to call him by his middle name instead of his first, so I have all three of his names ingrained in my mind. I don’t know if some of my students ever improved their writing - not just their ability; some had terrible handwriting! I don’t know if some were scared off science because of my class or if they appreciated what I taught them when they took something more difficult. I don’t know if I made a difference. But as much as I can hope they’re doing well, I can hope that I did help them in some way. I got to know them as much as they allowed me to (or I allowed myself to) for one year - sometimes two, or in the case of my COVID kindergarteners whom I also taught in their 1st and 2nd grade years, three years.
And if my teachers wonder if I remember them, I do. Mrs. Seidel, my 6th grade ELA teacher, made me want to teach English. I remember that at the end of one class, she poked her head into my math classroom on the other side of the prefab wall to ask me who the author of Little Women was. She was blanking on the name, and she knew I was an avid reader and would know. It took me maybe two seconds of thinking before I blurted out, “Louisa May Alcott!” I remember Mrs. Edwards, my 6th-grade history teacher. I would definitely say I was her “teacher’s pet,” something I’m conscious of not having. I would run errands and help her grade papers when I finished my work - I wasn’t her teacher’s aid, so probably not the best thing for me to be doing. She also bet me a coke that I couldn’t grow my fingernails out to the tips of my fingers. I was a nail-biter at the time, and she tried to incentivize me. I didn’t want that Coke badly enough apparently, because I failed and brought her one. I remember my high school trigonometry, pre-calculus, and AP Calculus teachers. These two women were both younger and related well to their students. They were also pregnant while teaching me, but I don’t have a memory of long-term subs for their classes. Thank goodness, since they were both amazing, and a long-term sub would not have taught math as well. I remember my chemistry teacher - I should since I took three chemistry classes from her! She had great rapport with her students, made a difficult subject fun, and called Fluoride the prostitute of the chemical world since it’ll bond with anything. Some things stick, and some really stick! While I didn’t know during my high school years that I would be a teacher later in life (my heart was set on working at a zoo at the time), I still learned to care for my students from my teachers’ examples.
Except for my 2020 kindergarteners, whom I was able to teach as 1st and then 2nd graders in farm to school lessons, I did get to revisit a few students I taught as 5th graders during their middle school years. Farm to School of Park County partnered with the Community School Collaborative in Livingston to lead workshops on Cougar Fridays.
Cougar Fridays were held one Friday each quarter. Students were out of school but were required to sign up for a workshop led by different nonprofits and organizations around town. F2SPC led a few different ones in the three years I worked with the organization, but the one I’m remembering involved the middle schoolers helping to harvest carrots and potatoes at our downtown farm and the middle school garden. After harvesting 44 lbs of carrots and 20 lbs of potatoes, they helped put the garden to bed for the winter and drew their own designs for the middle school garden to be incorporated into future plans. After my first year teaching with F2SPC as a FoodCorps service member, I moved from teaching the kindergarten and 3rd-5th grade lessons to only doing the 1st and 2nd grade lessons.
Because of that, it was fun to get to participate in Cougar Fridays where I would see the 4th and 5th graders I taught who were then 6th and 7th graders. I taught 5th graders knife skill lessons where they practiced knife cuts with carrots; then we harvested carrots with some of those same students. That may be backward in the farm-to-table timeline, but it was fun to see those students again!
Four recipes in The Harvest Baker that feature carrots and potatoes are Carrot and Leek Pie; New Potato, Spinach, and Blue Cheese Skillet Tart; Moravian Sugar Cake; and Sweet Carrot Pie. The Carrot and Leek Pie was the last recipe I baked in Ken Haedrich’s cookbook, not because I wasn’t looking forward to it, although it is a bit unusual; I just had to have the right occasion. Pie Day 2025 was as good a time as any! With two eggs and both cottage and Havarti cheese, it could be considered a quiche, but the veggies are the predominant flavors. It’s good for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
The New Potato, Spinach, and Blue Cheese Skillet Tart is another favorite recipe from the book, one I can see myself repeating yearly. This ends up looking like a galette, or freeform pie, and with the addition of bacon, a staple in many of Ken’s savory recipes, there’s nothing not to like!
I had never heard of a Moravian Sugar Cake before, but once I tried it, I could see myself making it again. It’s a yeasted coffee cake with mashed potatoes in the dough that gives it a tender, bread-like texture. If you’re not into overtly sweet desserts or breakfast treats, this is worth a try!
Last is the Sweet Carrot Pie. This was another recipe I had never heard of, but if you can make a sweet potato pie, why not a carrot pie? It was my contribution to my family’s Easter lunch last year, and my nephew loved it! It may not replace pumpkin as anyone’s favorite, but I, along with my family, was pleasantly surprised. If you ever find yourself with an excess of carrots, carrot pie is a good way to use them.
Teaching is one of the few professions in which people outside the field feel the need to comment on job performance, salary, and worth of those in the profession. Most people understand that just because someone watches court TV, they do not know more than attorneys or judges. People warn family and friends against Googling their symptoms because, for the most part, physicians who have studied medicine for years know more than someone trying to self-diagnose. Yet, when it comes to teaching a room full of 30+ young minds, politicians, parents, and any random person who sat in a classroom at one point in their life knows better how to teach, what to teach, and how much teachers should make, even though teachers have educational training and certifications to back up their qualifications. (I’m not talking about any outliers here, but the vast majority.) If so many others know better, why are we facing a teacher shortage across the nation? (According to a 2024 USA Today article, a study conducted by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University discovered the US had an estimated 55,000 vacant full-time teaching positions. Oklahoma, where I teach, had 1,019 open positions, fewer than Florida’s 5,000+ vacancies, but more than 0, which was the case for Arkansas, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Wyoming (Loehrke, 2024).) Shouldn’t those who think they know better be lining up to do better? But no, they chose other professions or roles in society. And for those who think, “those who can’t do, teach,” ask to visit your child’s classroom. Teachers are capable of many things, and we choose to teach. We also learn our students’ names. I care about my students, pray for them, and want their best, even if they leave at the end of the year. Secondary teachers who have 120 to 150+ students exceed their acquaintance quota of 150 people every year. Students on our rosters are more than names and faces. So, the next time you read an article about education in the U.S. or your state, think about who is affected. Chances are it’s not just students affected - students who could be your kids or grandkids. It’s thousands of people - students and staff members - you don’t know. Their challenges, like roots, are below the surface. Trust those who are in the field to know what’s best. And, if you can’t do that, fill one of the vacancies.
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