Let me just get this out there right away: I was the worst teacher ever hired at North High School.

And no, this isn't false humility. This was an observable scientific fact. I was more surprised than anyone when they rehired me at the end of my first year. The thing about teaching is that it takes 5 years just to become pretty good at the job. And what I lacked in initial skills, I made up for in perseverance. In fact, the best compliment I got from a student that first five years was, "You know, Mr. Jeffries, your class doesn't suck as much as everyone says it does." During my 27 years of teaching, I waited to see if North would hire somebody even worse than I was in my first year.

They didn't.

But when I look back, I was lucky to have so many mentors who helped me improve over that 27 years. One English teacher took me under his wing as we team-taught a class for at-risk students. On the first day he didn't just tell the students what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior, he acted out each in class. It was hilarious.

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NOW I'M TEACHING AT REGIS. I GUESS I'M STILL TEACHING BECAUSE I'M STILL TRYING TO GET IT RIGHT.

I've seen how the teachers I've worked with really impacted their students' lives, and I want to be able to do that. I've been teaching for 35 years now.

JIM JEFFRIES

Two teachers helped me learn how important it is to try anything – no matter how stupid it looked to me at the time. One teacher had a Voyageur Camp in our courtyard. They spent the night in tents. Students were playing with fire and axes and stuff. Try teaching the U.S. Bureaucracy with that going on outside your window. Another teacher camped in the same courtyard with his students. In the middle of winter. In freezing temperatures. Sleeping in an igloo. I thought both were lawsuits waiting to happen. But I bet their students still remember those experiences.

I also team-taught with our special ed teachers. They improved my teaching more than any class I took, ever. They taught me that the student is more important than the curriculum, and I should (gasp) change my teaching to reach my students. The special ed teachers never got to go to the Excellence in Education banquet because they didn't teach 4.0 students, but they had an out-sized impact on their students' lives and my own teaching.

I could also go on and on about all of the teachers I saw staying after school to help their struggling students. They got no extra pay for this. But at graduation, as the teachers lined the hall before the students went into the gym, I saw students hugging their teachers, crying, laughing ... and how grateful for how much these teachers poured into them.

After retiring from North, I taught in the Eau Claire County Jail. It was the first time in my teaching career that I didn't have problems with students being tardy. The teachers who trained me at Literacy Chippewa Valley taught me that the inmates are more than the sum of the crimes they committed. The teachers in the jail looked at what their students could become, not the mistakes they made.

Now I'm teaching at Regis. I guess I'm still teaching because I'm still trying to get it right. I've seen how the teachers I've worked with really impacted their students' lives, and I want to be able to do that. I've been teaching for 35 years now. And I'm still striving to be an average teacher. But thinking back to all of the teachers that I worked with and am currently working with ...

Average is pretty darn amazing.