Complaints at the assignment of reading Gary Rubinstein’s Reluctant Disciplinarian cannot be very bitter, since 140 (or so) pages of moderately large font, ample margins, and abundant cartoons make a short and simple read. And as with most pursuits, it rewards in proportion to the effort expended (which in this case is necessarily not very much).

I don’t mean to say that this book is worthless (though I could conscience throwing it away). There just isn’t much to it. I might lend it to someone who I thought might appreciate it, but I would not be disappointed if it were never returned. If I had some limited number of Ex Libris name plates that I stuck into the front covers of my books, this book – to paraphrase Elaine from Seinfeld – would not be plate-worthy. It has its moments of humor, and Rubinstein is a likeable guy, but the substance is thin and one gets the impression that it was padded to meet the requirements of publication.

Rubinstein and his friends who get voice at the end do have some suggestions and insights that I found worthwhile (though most of them are not unique to this book). I like, for instance, the rule that all student suggestions, criticisms, disputes, or arguments will be heard, but only after class or in a letter – which is democratic enough a principle to allow students a voice in their own governance, but which also maintains the teacher’s authority in the classroom and discourages empty filibustering (and if it’s worth staying after class or writing a letter, it’s probably worth hearing). I was struck by his emphasis on the importance of meeting student expectations: that students like doing well on traditional tests, and that it can be a good idea, even if the tests aren’t worth much by the teacher’s reckoning, to allow every student some measure of “traditional” success in order to invest him/her in the proceedings of the class.

Rubinstein does a fine job illustrating successful characteristics that are otherwise easily attributable to teacherly or unteacherly personalities: act like you expect them to do what you say, he suggests, and allow them to do it. Don’t make a student lose face by obeying, or allow him the opportunity to gain face by disobeying; keep the economics of “face” entirely out of the interaction. Tell a student to change his seat, for instance, like it weren’t an ordeal and like you have no reason to expect any friction, and walk away.

I got the impression from his crises of identity and by his gesturing into the direction of advice on the subject that some sort of personality neutrality is prudent to cultivate. I’m not sure he ever quite pins this down, but he does seem to have some difficulty with every new persona he adopts. Maybe what he stumbles toward is a kind of neutrality; we’re always a little different, I guess, with every different friend or group of friends, and are pressured into filling our expected role in each group, but this can be a liability in a classroom, especially where the new teacher develops an undesirable social role and consequently struggles to escape it. Don’t let the natural social politicking stick you somewhere. Be personality-neutral. Be able to shift from one day to the next, or one class period to the next, as is beneficial.

I think the central insight of the book, whether or not it is plainly (or ever) stated, is that every interaction is teaching. Education, or at least learning, will happen, for better or worse, because of or despite our efforts. And maybe some of the most important learning is not in the lesson plan. The teacher’s attitude teaches. The teacher’s interest and focus express what is and is not important according to the standards of the society that the teacher represents. And it is central to the task of managing a classroom that this subtler form of teaching is understood by the teacher and wielded competently.

I am suspicious of the decency of anyone who is not made uncomfortable by watching himself on videotape. What sort of man must he be? Surely not man at all, but either god or monster. Watching the tape, my first suggestion to myself: liberate or destroy that creature who, residing in the back of my throat, so perverts the calm, even timbre of voice I myself hear carrying my words, into the nasal, nebbishy croaking heard by the camera, and presumably – horror! – by everyone else.

That there is a difference between these two voices perhaps presents a way into understanding this endeavor of video self-analysis and the proposed benefits I am to gain from it: the I whom I know (or presume to) and the more visible fellow who stands in his place for everyone else need not and probably don’t coincide – apart from their saying the same words they need not overlap at all – and since high school students are as unlikely as anybody to extend themselves toward understanding me as God does, I ought to become acquainted with that uglier and more annoying fellow whom they will see every day in their classroom. I don’t have to like him but we will be teaching together, so we may as well cooperate. Or maybe my aim is to kill him, or one of us anyway, so that I and all others know the same unmistakable me.

Can it be for anything more than vanity, after all, that I extend to the one the dignity of believing it real? Maybe it is this realization that makes watching the video so uncomfortable: the cold, mechanical impartiality of the camera lends its vision credibility: what it sees seems more likely real, and what I perceive in its absence more likely the illusion. It is some consolation, at least, that everybody is reporting similar discomfort. We’re all dopes together. (And since nobody else seems so dopey to me, maybe the dopiness is a prejudice against oneself as much the previous illusion was a prejudice in one’s own favor.)

I wonder if seasoned actors or dancers or gymnasts can become immune to this discomfort, as they develop an awareness of their physical persons – of body and expression and motion and gesture – that approximates seeing oneself always from the outside as well as from within. Insofar as they can become so immune, I wonder if a stiff teacher can become a better teacher – can become more present, forceful, and commanding – by studying dance, or acting, or gymnastics, or the like. Interacting as a teacher with one or a few people can be managed successfully, I think, by some degree of eloquence and social authority; but with thirty people? Interaction becomes a performance. To Socrates education is fundamentally erotic; it is not hard to say that with a crowd of students the teacher must seduce and provoke, first to command attention and then to incite it into worthwhile motions of its own. Very early in these weeks of reflecting on teaching I observed that teacher-like people are often actor-like people; now I wonder how many successful teachers like to dance.

Ms. Monroe’s assignment asks for comment on two items, diplomatically opposing the first, “strengths,” not with its natural opponent, but with, rather, “areas for improvement.” It’s sweet of her, but too gentle for my own self-analysis, and I hope she won’t think me bold to replace it with a self-assignment: to cultivate a subtler perception of my presence, of body, motion, gesture. Not merely to “walk around the room” like so many books and speakers have already exhorted, but in walking to be more deeply aware of where I am and how I am there. To inhabit my body, and to be comfortable in it. To swat the clouds away from my head and more firmly anchor myself in my shoes. Maybe I should tighten my laces and loosen my necktie.

To go very deeply now into my “strengths” seems rather distasteful, both for breaking up the flow of thought and writing and also for being so unbecomingly congratulatory. But an assignment is an assignment (so I’ll just keep it short): my principle strength in this (grammar) lesson was my command of the material, even giving the impression – if I may be so vain as to say so – of intimacy with the material far deeper than the circumstances allowed me to share, and of revealing it selectively according to some hidden plan or principle. I should admit that this impression was largely an illusion, but I think a well-crafted one.