二零一七年十月三十日
With members in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, the D.C. 酒吧 is beginning a regular feature to profile the people who make up our community. Read about your peers, their lives, and their work around the world.
When 杰夫•范斯坦 thinks of his job as a history teacher in a Fairfax County, 维吉尼亚州, 高中, 他把自己想象成出庭辩护澳门赌场官网. “My job is to persuade my students that what they’re doing is important and that their time in class is important,他说. After all, he believes a lawyer’s job is “not to argue but to persuade.”
范斯坦应该知道. The West Potomac (Alexandria) High School social studies teacher started his career as a lawyer. One of his first positions was assistant district attorney in Brooklyn. 他搬到了美国.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission in D.C., doing legal work for almost 20 years, until he decided it was time for a change.
He remembers thinking, “This legal stuff’s not working out.“他热爱研究。, considered becoming a librarian because he loved looking things up, 但后来, 他说, he realized what he really loved was helping people do things. “I investigated getting a master’s in public administration,他说, 但我又想, 那教学呢??”
这是可行的. 今天, 范斯坦教授历史, 政府, 地理位置, and economics at the 高中 and spends four evenings a week teaching adult education in Fairfax County as well.
His history lessons extend beyond the walls of the classroom. 去年, Feinstein took a group of his history students to the Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville, 维吉尼亚州, the site of a former segregated school and also the place where students in 1951 staged a strike that led to Brown v. 董事会 of Education and the eventual end of “separate but equal” schooling in this country. The students heard from an older black man who shared his experiences growing up in a segregated school system.
根据学生的反应, 这是我们一整年教的最有影响力的一课,范斯坦在一篇关于这次旅行的文章中写道.
Henry Drembus, a senior at West Potomac who took Feinstein’s AP U.S. 去年的历史课, says what he remembers is that Feinstein wanted the students to understand that history was about more than just “the role of white men.” The class would look at women, Native Americans, and African Americans in American history as well. “That was nice—to go outside of what we were learning,” Drembus says. 事实上，范斯坦是他最喜欢的高中老师.
这也是范斯坦从事教学工作的原因之一. He remembers that his mentor from teacher training told him, “你在课堂上的每一个动作都是有目的的. 没有什么是随机的.”
“这让我专注于任务，”范斯坦说.
范斯坦的, that task also often involves war stories drawn from his years in New York with the district attorney’s office—with work on contract killing cases and other grisly crimes—and in the New York City Department of Investigation, where he investigated corruption in the city’s sanitation department and health department restaurant inspections.
One of his most powerful memories from that time was a robbery case. 被抢的女人看着那个年轻人, 谁没有隐瞒自己的身份, 并说, “比利, 你为什么要抢我?换句话说, Feinstein说, the young man was robbing a woman in his apartment building who recognized him. “It was the pathetic nature of his world view—no teacher had ever taught him, 所以这是教育系统的失败, 而不是刑事司法系统.”
Feinstein, 60, has now been part of that education system for 18 years. He’s so involved with the school community that he has created a separate 推特 account—@feinsteinapus—where he makes what he calls “rah-rah” tweets about the school and teases freshmen. 例如, 不久前, he tweeted a picture of some toolsheds behind the school and wrote: “parking for our fleet of limos.他还写道, “Tomorrow’s APUS [Advanced Placement United States] essay will be on Woodrow Wilson, 莱特兄弟, 布克·T. 华盛顿. 使用卷W的学生可以得到额外的学分.”
不久前, one of Feinstein’s former students came up to him at Costco and told him he just started law school. Then the student said, “I still think of and use what you taught us about how to write.”
Feinstein says it’s always nice when he runs into former students, 但如果他们说得具体一点就更好了. “It’s an important part of what I think my classes should be about. 我想让他们永远记住这些技能.”
他回避任何关于他长时间工作的话题. “I wanted something that was intellectually engaging but rigorous,他说. 他喜欢长时间的工作, “但在我做了所有这些工作之后, 我没有得到一种满足感. That was a hole and a void that was never solved by job one, two, three, or four as a lawyer.”
