It's been over ten years that I've worked tech support for school districts, but one thing I will never forget is how most teachers treated other people from outside of the classroom in front of their students.
I hope some of you have had the opportunity to experience a fantastic teacher in your life, and if you haven't, your time will come. Not all teachers are created equally, but this story will highlight some of those teachers who are truthfully and honestly real gems.
Working in tech support in a school district can be interesting. In my case, this story will highlight when I was the only tech that supported five schools in the school district I was employed with. We had a part-time system/network admin who worked remotely and came into the office once a month or so. Otherwise, we had a help desk person, someone who managed the databases for all the school systems, and another who worked school records and would occasionally help with tech stuff here and there. Needless to say, it was always busy, and there was never a lack of work to be done. It was challenging, and all of those things that I am supposed to say to help build up this story, but honestly, it was one of the best experiences of my life, and the people(teachers, staff, & students) were all fantastic to work with and learn from.
Now that I've followed the proper "click-bait"/"news story" format you find so often on social media, let's tell you why I didn't actually work in tech support.
I was a digital wizard, a projector magician, the foxfire soothsayer, and I think you get the point. When it came to techonlogy, there were teachers who treated me like the walking digital messiah.
Anytime those teachers would see me coming down the hall of their schools, they would summon my presence to their room of technological mayhem so that I could provide good technological ju-ju for them during their days. (no, I'm not kidding.) There were a few teachers who actively did this. Among them, a few others, the most common scenarios would go something similar to this, and keep in mind if you haven't experienced something like this yet, you will.
We get summoned into the classroom to fix an issue. The LITERAL moment you walk into the classroom, everything starts working again.
I've had this happen more times than I can count. Most often, it's because the teacher did something wrong, and in the time they summoned me and I got there, they either rebooted and never came back to it or were just like one step off from being there. Shit happens, teachers get distracted, whatever the case is, I get it. The point is, the teacher now thinks that my mere presence has somehow sent telepathic waves into their digital nightmares, and I can now scare them away or something.
It doesn't stop there, though, because these teachers are real gems, as I've said. They make it a big deal in front of the entire classroom how this guy from tech support walked in, and I quote, "struck the fear of God into this forsaken technology."
I've told a detailed story about this on a live stream once. Still, there was one instance where I fixed an issue in one of these classrooms, and the teacher, of course, was so thankful, but one of the students came up and hugged me and thanked me. They told me that this class where they use the projector is their favorite part of their day. The teacher came up to me later that day and explained this student has a hard life at home, and when they're in school, it's the safest they feel, and this class was one of their favorite classes that they look forward to every day.
I never thought working in tech support would lead to me becoming a digital wizard and having an impact on students' lives, but here we are. Ten years later, these memories still stand firm with me because they helped mold me into everything I am today.
The moments like those don't come as often as we wish, but we cherish them, making us remember why we're doing what we're doing. Technology is my passion, and helping others is truly my purpose.
