Melissa Wantz: Notes from West Egg

I added this sign to the front of my classroom this year. So far, one kid has asked about it, about what it means to be in permanent beta mode. I got the term from bloggers, I guess. They encourage new businesses to be constantly testing and responding to mistakes, especially on the web. The idea of waiting to announce or sell until you have the perfect product is apparently being relegated to the history bin in this new technology landscape. Wait too long and someone else will beat you to the market. Plus, the clients are more forgiving of mistakes as long as they believe you are working on them (and as long as you do fix them).

When a business releases a website or web-based company, the product has already been through alpha mode where it is unavailable to the public — for good reason. Beta is when the public can access it but with the warning that their experience may include mistakes or less-than-perfect service. I’m not even sure what comes after beta because, as a teacher, the next stage doesn’t really interest me.

I will never have the perfect classroom with a perfect “product” to pitch my students. That would bore me. At the point where I feel like I’ve crafted the perfect World Literature or journalism program, it will be time for me to hand it over to someone else and look for new challenges.

That’s just me, I guess. I know some teachers who are happy teaching the exact same lessons from one year to the next, with little to no changes. The kids change, the relationships change and that’s enough for them. That’s okay. But it’s not for me. I thrive in experimental mode, and I think the kids like it that way because it reminds them of themselves a little bit, constantly striving, sometimes failing and starting over. You have to be both confident and humble to work like this. I couldn’t have done it in my 20s or 30s. I guess that’s one good thing about the 40s, you tend to get over yourself faster.