The Bell Curve and The Mole...

I often tell the first-years that when it comes to classroom management you will have three or four students in each class that will behave no matter what, three or four that will act up no matter what, and everyone else is in the middle and can go either way.  In listening to this great interview with Ed Burns, co-creator of The Wire (David Simon once described Burns, a former soldier in Vietnam, police detective in the Western District of Baltimore, and teacher in inner-city Baltimore, as a veteran of three failed wars: Vietnam, drugs, poverty), I realized that not only is this true for the classroom, it is true for the teaching profession in general.  Some teachers will give their all no matter what, some will do as little as possible no matter what, and the majority will do only what is required.  And this is not only true for teachers, it is true for every profession.  Burns talks about his success as a detective by describing a bell curve: 

You know, in any profession you have the old bell curve.  Most of the people just want to do the job and they will tend to the job, and then a group of people on one end who will actually hurt the job, use the job, and then there is another group that are enamored of the job and are dedicated.  And I sort of think that I am one of the people that really gets involved with something I do.  I don't think I am an anamoly.  The thing about human beings is, there is another animal we most closely resemble and that is the mole... We love to get down in a rut and stay there and like the mole we become blind because we are not looking around.  We turn off the one thing that makes us different than the mole, we turn off our brains.  We just do things.  And in the doing them it becomes, we have a comfort and as long as we are in that comfort zone we are happy, or maybe just content.  But we, we are very reluctant to push out... Change petrifies people...