The Teaching Text (You're Welcome)

By Douglas Robertson

Douglas James Robertson (author of "The Weird Teacher") is widely recognized as the most innovative, challenging, skilled, and handsome educator this planet has seen since the first fish pulled itself from the primordial ooze. His new book brilliantly covers The Test, controlling administrators, being connected, and so much more. If you have a question about teaching the answer is in this book. If the answer isn't in this book your question was dumb.*

Douglas can be found practicing his art wherever there are learners in need of inspiration, motivation, perspiration, and education. We are lucky to have him and to have this book.

You're welcome.

*Yes, this is a satire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Robertson
• Release date: Mar 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310618598

Douglas Robertson

Doug Robertson (author of "He's the Weird Teacher") has been an elementary school teacher for nine years now. As low man on the totem pole he moved around a lot, but it has given him a chance to experience all kinds of teachers and students. He now resides in southern Oregon with his wife and son, where he teaches fourth grade (again). For fun he trains for triathlons, rides his motorcycle, and makes small children cry at the mall. Doug vehemently resists the negative stereotype of teachers and fights for teacher rights as often as he can. He advocates for his students and loves and believes in each and every one of them. Doug has a grand plan to become a famous teacher and infect future generations of educators and students with his philosophy, which will lead to a joyous education renaissance, flying unicorns, and rock and roll for all.

Book preview

THE

Teaching

Text

(You’re Welcome)

Douglas

James

Robertson

Copyright 2015 by Douglas James Robertson

First Edition

Book design: Y42K Publishing Services

http://www.y42k.com/bookproduction.html

Disclaimer: THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) is set in an alternate universe where He’s the Weird Teacher gained world-wide accord and the resulting fame went directly to my head until I became convinced I was an unimpeachable eduhero.

This is the dark timeline birthed from those circumstances.

It’s also a joke. Lighten up, Francis.

List of Brilliance

I: Preamble

II: The Test Master

III: My Hallowed Place of Learning Impartation

IV: Administrating My Administrators

V: Edunected™

VI: Data is the Messiah

VII: I Won’t Be Replaced By A Computer (But You Might Be If You Don’t Listen To Me)

VIII: You Should Be Teaching Harder, Your Family Can Wait

XI: Change This

X: You're Welcome

For: Me.

Of course

To my parents, wife, and children:

You must be so proud of me.

You’re welcome.

I: Preamble

The three greatest teachers who ever lived are Socrates, Yoda, and myself. The first two never took the time to write a book, which is why it falls to me to write THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome).

You’re welcome.

Yoda’s speech impediment would have made his book impossible to read and Socrates didn’t even speak English, so how much could he have known? It had to be me.

You’re welcome again.

THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) will cover every subject every other teaching book you’ve ever read has covered, but it will cover it in greater detail, with better information, and it will have been written by me, Douglas James Robertson. This final fact is what will truly separate THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) from the glut of subpar books about teaching currently sitting on your shelf. Once you own THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) you may as well throw those other teaching books away. Better yet- burn them. If you throw them away there’s a chance a bum might find them and read them and start thinking he knows how to properly teach. This would be tragically detrimental to the already suffering Bum Education Community (hereby known as the BEC). The safest course of action, then, is to burn the non-THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) books you already own and buy another copy of THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) to throw away. Trust me, the BEC will thank you. By you I mean me.

The BEC is also welcome.

Some of you might be wondering what qualifies me to write THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome). To you few doubters I say, Shut up. I would say that too. When I see you at one of the many book signings that will result from the publication of THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) I will look you right in the eye and say, Shut up. When I sign the dozens of copies of THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) you are buying for your entire staff, family, the half dozen or so friends you pretend you have so we don’t feel badly for you, and your six real Twitter followers (the other fourteen are porn bots, don’t deny it), I will sign it, Shut up. You’re Welcome. Douglas James Robertson.

And you will thank me for it.

The rest of you, who I assume are most of you, know why I am the only teacher truly qualified to write THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome). I will put it into words, so that you do not have to. After all, my words will be better than your words ever could. I am the only teacher qualified to write THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) because I am simply the best, most inventive, most connected, most astounding teacher who has ever picked up a piece of chalk and fired it at an unruly student’s head from across a classroom. Not that I have unruly students in my class. This hypothetical situation would occur in a room which I have been invited into so as to show the teacher who works in that room how he or she could be a better teacher. Obviously not better to the extent that I am, but who could be?

You will not, I am sorry to say, become the caliber of teacher I am by reading this book. Not even by studying this book’s every word, every phrase, every comma will you approach the level of skill with which I instruct. But you will glance it. You will see the greatness from afar and it will give you hope. It will raise you up and you will feel a glow knowing that somewhere in the world there is a teacher like me.

This book will make you feel badly about how you teach. This is not my intent but it is an unfortunate byproduct. Do not be too hard on yourself. Had I been alive at the time Benjamin Pulleyn surely would have turned the education of Isaac Newton over to me and drowned himself in wig powder. Newton would have made his most famous discoveries and more that much quicker under my hand. Now that I think on it, it is a loss for all humanity that I was not born then. Alas. However, I am alive now and able to pass on as much of my skill as your less-able minds can absorb.

And for that, you are welcome.

II: The Test Master

The great pendulum of education has swung, once again, to the testing of students to ascertain the depth and breadth of their knowledge and the skill of their teachers. Students across America are seated proudly at desks and computers many times during the year so that their learning might be assessed and their teacher’s fate be determined.

It is