<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>Courtesy of NPR at:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/10/18/354630900/the-secret-lives-of-teachers">http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/10/18/354630900/the-secret-lives-of-teachers</a></div><div><br></div><div>--------------------------------------</div><div><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px 11px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.125; font-size: 3.2rem; font-family: Georgia, serif;">The Secret Lives of Teachers</h1></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Steve Drummond </span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><img src="cid:6CC00835-808E-4388-9772-F6472FCE5CA9" alt="image3.jpeg" id="6CC00835-808E-4388-9772-F6472FCE5CA9"></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So where do they go, all the teachers, when the bell rings at 3 o'clock?</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When you're a kid, you don't really think they go anywhere. Except home, maybe, to grade papers and plan lessons and think up pop quizzes.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And when you find out otherwise, it's a strange experience. Many people remember it vividly: the disorienting feeling of encountering your teacher in the grocery store, or in the line at McDonald's, talking and acting just like other grownups. A jarring reminder that they have lives outside the classroom.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But of course teachers go off and do all sorts of things: They write books and play music and run for office and start businesses. For some, a life outside the classroom is an economic necessity. In many states, </span><a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/07/23/94168/mid-and-late-career-teachers-struggle-with-paltry-incomes/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-touch-callout: none; text-decoration: none;">more than 1 in 5</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> teachers has a second job.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For others, it's a natural outgrowth of their lives as educators: the drama teacher performing in community theater, the history teacher/Civil War re-enactor, the music teacher onstage at open-mic night.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And still others have some private passion that has nothing to do with teaching or school — it may be the thing that keeps them fresh and fired up when they are in the classroom.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So where </span><em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">do</em><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> they go when the 3:00 bell rings? To answer that, we begin today our new project, </span><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The Secret Lives of Teachers</strong><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">.</span></div><div><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></strong></div><div><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">'Art Brings Me Back'</strong></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For Mathias "Spider" Schergen, his Secret Life plays out in a one-car garage out back of his house in Southwest Chicago.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He turned it into a studio, a crowded place full of lumber and wood and paint and scrap metal and odd things like shoes and fabric. Stuff that he fashions into art.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The art brings me back to my thinking and reflection," he says.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Schergen, 61, is slender and muscular — his most notable feature, perhaps, his tattoos of spiders. They're part of a persona that he has created — "Mr. Spider" — that year after year his students at Jenner Elementary Academy of the Arts find mysterious and fascinating.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He has taught there for 21 years, through good times and bad. Once, the school stood in the shadow of the notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects in one of the city's most violent and dangerous neighborhoods. Now, the projects are gone and the school is surrounded by new developments.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Still, it draws many children from the surrounding neighborhood: 98 percent African-American, 96 percent (low income) free and reduced lunch.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I first met Schergen seven years ago, on a reporting trip for a story about great teachers and how they keep their teaching fresh year after year. In class, he has a persona: He exudes coolness and confidence, joking with the students, firmly keeping them on task.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Over dinner at his home, he's a different guy. Quiet, soft-spoken, deferential.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"I'm a loner kind of guy," he says. And he needs the time in his studio to square those two sides of his personality.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"As my life has changed, and I've found I'm not so harried, my interest and my aesthetic have reflected that." He's now making work that's more colorful and more connected to other people.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He recently started transforming objects that other people have discarded or overlooked. He wants to tell the stories that might be hidden in a forgotten shoe or a child's headboard covered in stickers.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He says he can't remember a day when he didn't spend time in his studio. When he's there, cutting and clipping and gluing and assembling, time doesn't exist. "If we didn't call him inside, he would never come in," says his wife, Vanessa.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He says his time in the studio has a strong connection to his time in the classroom.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The relationship is symbiotic," he explains, "they both affect one another and they both affect me."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He carries his thoughts from Jenner with him when he works out back. "I can usually work out issues I've been having during school," he says. "I think of different ways to look at something, and I often realize there's a completely difference approach I should be taking with a student."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tell us about the Secret Lives of Teachers</strong> – maybe your own or a teacher you know. Or post your own Secret Life on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram at <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#secretteachers</strong>. We're on Twitter at <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">@npr_ed</strong>. Our Facebook page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/nprEd/402441646563033" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-touch-callout: none; text-decoration: none;">is here</a> or you can drop us an email at <a href="mailto:NPREd@npr.org" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-touch-callout: none; text-decoration: none;">NPREd@npr.org</a>.</span></div><div><br></div><div>--------------------------------------<br><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There's room at the top they are telling you still.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- John Lennon</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div></div></body></html>