“I feel like I’m making a difference here with these kids.”

Mike Laska is a math teacher at Murray Middle School in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has been working as teacher for over 31 years and has taught at Murray since 1987.

Faculty photo of Mike Laska
Photo Credit: http://www.spps.org/Domain/776 

Modest Beginnings

I’ve always been good in the math and science areas. That was always a strength growing up, so that’s what kind of brought me to the engineering side of things. And it wasn’t that --you’re going to college, you knew that growing up. That was just embedded in you growing up. So, I got into the ROTC thing at the U here, and that only lasted two years. The regimentation that they had: getting up on Wednesdays and putting on a uniform and going to march at the field house on the third floor, and getting demerits for having dust on my shoes, and if the hair wasn’t just quite right over the years--that wasn’t for me. Which was maybe another reason why I kinda like teaching. At the time, teaching was one of these jobs where you were kind of pretty much left by yourself in the room. As long as you were doing your job, you could pretty much run your classroom any way you wanted to, and that kind appealed to me--not that I was like “anti-authority” or anything like that, but there’s not many kind of jobs where you have that kind of autonomy too.
At the time I was dating my future wife, she was an elementary ed major. She was doing some student teaching out in Fridley and she had a student who was struggling in math. She obviously knew that I was good at math, so--"Could you come work with this kid maybe?” And so she’s up teaching in front of the class, doing her student teaching, and I’m in the back working with a couple of kids who were struggling. And something switched, a switch went off, and I said,

“I feel like I’m making a difference here with these kids.” It wasn’t anything earth-shattering or anything, at that point it was just a kind of a notion that maybe, maybe this is something I could do. So that’s when it first happened for me. I was about 21 years old, and I said “Oh, maybe I want to go into teaching.” So what do I do? I got all these engineering credits, where can I use them so I’m not starting over again? You know, you can teach all kinds of stuff. So I said, “I’ve got all these physics and math credits, so maybe I’ll be a math teacher.” And so I talked to an adviser/counselor and he said,

“Well, you can probably get this teaching degree knocked out in like a year, year and a half.” And so that’s what I ended up doing.

Working in Education

[Teaching in a] High School, I didn’t actually teach their higher level classes, they stuck me with their low-level ninth grade courses. So these kids were struggling. I mean, they really weren’t that much different than the kids I’m working with here, and in some cases not quite as strong math-wise. But I found out when you got to the high school level, --whereas these elementary kids were very enthusiastic, and it didn’t even matter what level of math you were at, they were just excited to have an adult next to them-- these high school kids were so apathetic. Like, how do you make a difference with this kind of kid? So it’s a different type of mindset you have to kinda get wrapped around.

Sometimes it wasn’t so much the math, it was more just kinda getting to know the kid, the family, the situation, kinda like “Where do you see yourself in five years? How can I help you maybe get to that point?” Whereas, when you’re working with a kid who’s in fourth grade, obviously you’re not looking that far ahead. 'Cause when I student-taught at Hastings High School and basically had some of their higher level classes there, they were totally different kind of kids too. They’re ready for their levels. Then when I came to Murray Middle School, it was like, oh my gosh, junior high. It’s a very high energy kind of kid. And I needed to have like five different things going on each hour, because their attention span is only for like seven minutes. With high school kids I can maybe do a couple things and that’s fine to fill an hour. But middle school, I found right away that I gotta have five different activities going on. And it doesn’t even have to be math related, I mean it just had to be something different from what we were doing ten minutes ago. And for most of those kids then, math was a pretty quick sort of hour for them, it wasn’t drudgery, where you’re just doing math the whole hour. It seems to work, in this age.

Front entrance of Murray Middle School
Photo Credit: https://saintpaulbybike.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/summer-sites-in-st-anthony-park/

Technology and Teaching

At my age, trying to keep up with the latest greatest is impossible. So now, these kids have iPads. Well, I just got my first smartphone like six months ago! So for me, it’s a new territory. One time, Murray was like the leading school for the use of like graphing calculators. We were the first ones on board with those, and we got really good at those. But they’re so obsolete now, nobody uses them. We use the iPad or Desmos, the calculator on there that’s a little more souped up. So that’s been a huge learning curve, just trying to keep up with it. And I got to the point where it’s like, well, do I even try anymore? 'Cause it’s like, as soon as you think you’re on top of it, you’re already behind. So, we’ll use it periodically. And the kids understand at my age that we’re not gonna be, so like “Laska, you’re old-school. We’re fine with that.” And actually some of the parents are actually kind of, I think, grateful that maybe there are some people my age still around. They see how fast things are moving and they look at, maybe, this classroom is maybe a break to some of that.
People think that the reason our educational system hasn’t moved forward is because still there's this kind of--I don’t know what you’d call it--this inertia that things aren’t changing. Well, it is changing. The room here is obviously 75 years old yet, but if you sit in a classroom today it’s gonna look different than what it was 75 years ago. It’s different. I mean I still have file cabinets here they’re filled with stuff, alright? But then I’ll get teachers who are coming in new, and there are these digital things. But it’s--there’s still files {smiles} they have to look through, and they say

“Where did I--which file did I put this into?” And so, you’ll watch them for 5 minutes searching on their computer trying to find something, whereas I know exactly which file cabinet to go into {laughs} to find, what I need.

The Rewards and Takeaways from Teaching

For me, what is kinda nice, because I have been in this building since 1987--which in this district is really rare, usually in large districts you move from building to building--but I am now at a point after over 30 years where I am now getting second generation students. So, kids of kids I’ve had. So, that kind of continuity, to be able to understand that you’ve had that kind of impact so now that you have a second generation of families now, is kind of unique. And the fact that I’ve been basically in this same neighborhood, so you’ll have families that will request you as teachers because they know what they’re gonna get. They don’t want the unknown, they want “I know what you did for me as a kid, so here’s what I want.” And when you have the same families sending multiple kids through, you kinda get to know some of these families fairly well. So that kind of relationship is… I don’t know if there’s many jobs where you can have that kind of impact, I guess.
For awhile there, the kids in my room were the same age she [regarding his daughter] was. So, whatever she was watching on TV I could bring it back here and have the same--whatever language she was using whatever slang I could bring it here. Now it’s like “Forget about it.” Now I’m nowhere near the level that’s happening in the world now. I can’t--

"Laska you don’t know what’s happening.”

“Oh yeah, ya' got me.”

{Smiling} So I’ll try and bring back some old words. And when I use them, {laughs} they just roll their eyes. Or sometimes, I’ll actually use them in the hallway like it’s coming back again! {laughs}Like “Fo shizzle” When was the last time they heard that word? And they go {makes groaning sound} they just die when they hear it! {laughs}

The End of a Journey

So, I’ll be retiring December of next year, that’s my goal. It is [exciting]! In a melancholy way too. You think back at what you’ve done over these years… Some of the people--not that it’s big news yet, but it’s out there for enough people that I’m starting to get some parents saying, “No, no, you can’t! I’ve got a kid coming up in 6th grade! You’ve got to be there for a couple more years!”

What I’ve kind of learned is that it’s not so much the math you’re teaching them. Nobody will ever remember that. But they’ll remember doing our stupid little ten minute openers at the beginning of class. When kids come back and visit they ask,

“Are you still doing the openers?”

“Well yeah, of course I am!”

They remember that kind of stuff. They remember a kind of feely tone in the class. That’s the kind of stuff you remember. And, when I look back it’s not even that I--you know I had some good math teachers growing up, but it’s not that I can point to any one math teacher that I had that was like some inspiration. Nothing like that at all. I guess I was more grateful that the teachers that I had were competent enough that they could allow me to go to the next level, and the next level, and the next level, and keep things going. I never felt that any teacher that I had math-wise was so poor that I couldn’t go onto that next level. So, when I look at what I’m doing with these kids- yeah, you’re gonna learn some math as much as I can possibly give you. More than that though, I want to make sure that you’re ready for the next level. So that when you get to high school, or whatever your next class is, that when you sit in there, you feel as though you’ve got a fair shank at getting through this stuff. That you’ve felt prepared enough to get there. And where that takes you, I don’t know. But, at least my job is to get you to that next level. And that seems to work for me pretty well. And if the kid has some fun along the way--I don’t want to say that every kid that comes through here that math is their best subject, their favorite subject. But, if I can get a kid that hated math to at least tolerate it, I’ll take that as a victory too.