Jeffrey H. Konis
The book is replete with invaluable suggestions how to be a more effective teacher at the high school level drawn from a combination of common sense and first-hand experiences in and out of the classroom with both students and teachers. The focus is on establishing a relationship of trust and respect with the students by providing them with
voice and choice, which will provide the requisite foundation for successful teaching while maximizing the learning process for the students. Among the many questions addressed include: Why give up a lucrative career in the law to become a teacher? How are lawyering skills similar to those needed to be an effective teacher? Why do some teachers take things said or done by their students personally? Are younger high school teachers too young? Are too many teachers allowing their egos to get in the way of their teaching? Are teachers paying enough attention to
all of their students? How important is a supportive administration to good teaching? Last, what should we be teaching our students?
Jeff Konis, after earning a joint J.D./M.B.A. degree, practiced law in the field of securities litigation in both the public and private sectors for fifteen years. During his legal career, he was closely involved in a number of high-profile cases on behalf of shareholders, including Drexel Burnham Lambert, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Enron. He subsequently completed his Master's degree in Education and embarked upon a career as a high school Social Studies teacher at Yorktown High School in New York. He currently lives in Orange County, New York with his wife, Pamela, and two boys, Alexander and Marc.
I practiced law for some fifteen years, in New York City predominantly, until 2003, when I was about to join a firm outside Philadelphia. I called my parents one night and told them I did not want to go through life just having been a lawyer, and they asked a reasonable question: “Well then, what do you think you might like to do?” I told them I thought that I’d like to teach. Being amazing parents as always, they told me, “Then do it.” I discussed it with my wife who, being the amazing wife as always, said the same. That was it.
I enrolled in Fordham’s master’s program in education that summer and completed it by the following summer, earning my third postgraduate degree. In addition to this and my law degree, I have an M.B.A., or Master’s of Business Administration. The gods continued to smile on me, and I got a job in a terrific school district in northern Westchester County, New York. I started teaching Social Studies in the fall of 2004, at Yorktown High School. Yorktown is a predominantly white, upper-middle-class community with little, but some, diversity. For about a year, I gained invaluable student-teaching experience in a suburban, ethnically mixed school where Spanish was the first language of more than half of the student body. Consequently, I offer this one caveat: everything you are about to read is based on this limited amount of teaching experience.
That said, everything you are about to read should nevertheless resonate with everyone, because much, if not most, of this book reflects common sense. The catalyst for this book has been what I consider to be the very troubling absence of what most take for granted as common sense in the classroom. As detailed later in this book, I attribute this absence largely to an attendant lack of maturity on the part of many of our teachers, particularly, and not surprisingly, the younger ones.
So, why leave the law to become a teacher? Am I nuts? What’s wrong with me? If these questions did not immediately come to your mind, then, clearly, you are not paying attention. I’ll give you the Cliff Notes, or greatly abbreviated, version of the answer: to a large extent, I grew up. It took me awhile, granted, but I finally appreciated the infinite wisdom of recognizing that there are more important things in life than money.
Health? Family? Quality time? Or how about the novel notion of having a job that you truly enjoy? Let me be clear: I am not some disgruntled former attorney. I enjoyed much of what the legal profession had to offer, and I’m not speaking of compensation here. It was just that, at the end of the day, I really wasn’t doing anything of great import for anyone but the partners for whom I worked and, financially speaking, myself.
I left the law also because I have two little boys, and I decided that I was not going to miss watching them grow up, doing the things that happen once, whether crawling, walking, or speaking for the first time. I have often said that money can be made up if need be, but these times with your children, once missed, are gone forever. Better yet, getting out of my car at the end of the day, being greeted by cheers of “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” is priceless. Why on earth would I want to sacrifice such experiences only to make more money? Seriously. I also suspected, correctly so, that I would love teaching, actually be good at it, and have the opportunity to make a real difference in someone’s life.
