Being a young teacher in Phoenix, Arizona in the '90s



When I started teaching, in 1996, I considered myself a young teacher. I really wasn't that young, I was 38, but to my mind I really wasn't old enough to be a teacher. And since then I've learned how dramatically different a few years seems to be, and that it gets less and less all of the time afterwards. By the time I got into my fifties, I was getting used to people in their 60s and 70s saying "you know, people our age".

At the Art Institute of Phoenix, where I started in September of 1996, most of the students were right out of high school. That is, most were 19 and 20. Yes, there were a few scattered elderly students, as much as in their late twenties, and a few even older, but they were rare. And the difference between someone who has just graduated from high school and someone who was almost forty was considerable. I was the generation of their parents. And I had gotten so old that I had forgotten the sharp distinctions that are so very obvious at a younger age, such as the fact that when I was a senior in high school I never associated with Juniors, and definitely not with Sophomores.

My perception of teachers, of course, was that they were very elderly, with long grey beards, a stooping walk, and those little "half-moon" glasses which gave them a piercing stare. And since my hair hadn't turned grey in my late thirties, and my close-up vision was still excellent, I hadn't realized that I had slipped into the elderly group. And the first time that I was addressed as "Mr. Hall" came as quite a shock. By the way, this was essentially a trade school, which prepared people for a job, so I encouraged people to call me Brad, the same way that they would address their boss in the future. Many of my female students really couldn't bring themselves to do that, and called me "Mr. Brad", which I thought was as cute as heck.

Since this was a private college, we teachers were informed that we should never socialize with students, and certainly never become romantically involved. This was never an issue with me, as while I was still young, I wasn't as young and goofy as they were. I had no interest in socializing with them, and the girls that batted their eyelashes at me (yes, some did) had no idea that I had a gorgeous girlfriend who was a full-grown woman, which is what I wanted. And even though I was a young teacher, those girls were half my age.

By the way, when I started teaching at a Community College, the rules of socializing with students weren't so strict, and the ages of the students tended to be more varied. Still, they were mostly recent high school grads, but more people who were getting back to college later in life, even people older than me (and by then I was in my forties!). 80% of the teachers in the Maricopa County Community College system are part-timers, like I was, so they're just told to behave professionally, and wait until someone is no longer in your class to begin socializing, or dating them. I did that.

Being a teacher is a title you carry all of your life, and while I haven't taught for over ten years, I still have my "part-time employee" badge at GCC, and I'm very grateful for people who remember me.
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