When I have a chance on the weekend, I watch Book TV, most especially when it’s not history or politics.  There were a couple of book talks this past weekend that I really enjoyed. One was about teaching and one was about beautiful business practices.

I’d like to tell you about a great speaker on education.  His name is Thomas M. Bloch. The title of his book is: Stand for the Best: What I Learned after Leaving My Job as CEO of H&R Bloch to Become a Teacher and Founder of an Inner-City Charter School.

Thomas Bloch was CEO  for seven years, and then he quit to take another job. He took a big pay cut. In fact, in his new job, he made in a year what he used to make in one week when he was CEO.

Please know he did a beautiful job as CEO. Some of his former staff were in the audience, and they had loved working with him and had been inspired by him.

Thomas Bloch echoed one of the themes of Heavenletters when he said: “I knew I just couldn’t do it for the money any more. I had to follow my heart, and my heart was in teaching.”   And that’s just what he did. You know that takes a certain amount of courage.

He is now teaching 8th grade algebra in a charter school in Kansas. He also founded this charter school, and he is chairman of the board.  He must be a fabulous teacher.

A couple of things I learned from his talk:

In order to get certified to teach — notice I say certified, not qualified — he had to go back to college for two years and take many courses he didn’t want and which were not intrinsically valuable, but he did what he had to do in order to be allowed to teach.

I was happy to hear that in some states now, this has changed. People in the workforce who now want to become teachers are given credit for their life experience. They do not have to spend two years to become certified. How many people can take two years off just like that? How many have the money to pay for the tuition anyway. I was glad to hear that some states are using common sense.

Thomas Bloch and I did not agree on everything by any means, but I tell you, I would be proud to teach with him any day.

He is for merit pay and longer school year and school days. I have long been opposed to longer days and  longer school year.  The seven or so hours that kids were in school when I taught was too long a day. What teenager can sit that long? The theory seems to be that the more hours and days you are in school, the more you will learn. I just never saw it that way.  To be confined and herded longer? It made no sense to me. Maybe with very academic classes, that could be true, but had heard that, by and large, only 10% of children in public school are truly academic.  It could well be that Mr. Bloch has ideas that would answer all my objections.

Anyway, I saw too much stultification in school when I taught, and I haven’t even mentioned how worn out a teacher is after five or six classes a day. Add another class or two? They’d have to carry me out!

In theory, I like the idea of merit pay. It depends who decides if you merit more pay. My wonderful principal, Mr. Spring,  would have raised my pay in a heartbeat.

From day 1, the principal who came after Mr. Spring saw my teaching differently. I don’t believe he would ever have come to see the value of creative and humanistic teaching. I am positive he wouldn’t have given me merit pay. He might even have fired me if I hadn’t had tenure and he could have.

But what really endeared me to Thomas Bloch — in addition to his following his heart —      was when he told what he thinks makes a good teacher. Simply this: The teacher has to care. The teacher has to have a spark.

Three cheers for you, Mr. Bloch. And keep doing what you’re doing.