7 December 2009
Mr. John Belcaster shares his life experiences
by Sony Kassam and Bushra Kabir
Mr. Belcaster currently teaches the AP Microeconomics and Sustainable Engineering and Economic Development classes at Northside. Photo by XXXXXXXXX
A can of diet coke is usually seen atop his desk in room 224, which houses a “The Office” poster on the bulletin board near the door of the classroom. He religiously reads the New York Times and is also a fan of faux- political newscaster Stephen Colbert. He is often thought of as the man with the power “to make the world a better place” one small step at a time. He was awarded the 2009 Yale Educator Award, an award sponsored by Yale University’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, displaying his ability to inspire and support his students. Additionally, he received the Teacher Tribute Initiative from Stanford University for his “exceptional teaching.” This man is more commonly known as Mr. John Belcaster, social science department.
Mr. Belcaster currently teaches AP Microeconomics and Sustainable Engineering and Economic Development at Northside. He also sponsors several clubs that include Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Northside Students for Sweatshops, and National Organization for Women (NOW).
Majoring in history and economics, Mr. Belcaster graduated from Northwestern University. After college, Mr. Belcaster began to work at Anderson Consulting, a company that has since gone out of business. He wrote software for Anderson Consulting between 1986 and 1988, a period in which the company was at its highest peak, becoming “the largest information system in the world” at the time.
Mr. Belcaster then went on to attend both graduate school and later law school at Yale University, working towards a master’s degree in both history and economics. Following his graduation from Yale, he worked for a federal judge and then worked on a political campaign around 1994 for then-State Treasurer Pat Quinn “who at the time … [was] running for Illinois governor.”
Afterwards, Mr. Belcaster began working at a civil rights firm for ten years in Chicago before he began teaching at Providence St. Mel, a private school on Chicago’s west side, where he taught mathematics for about half a year.
“[Providence St. Mel was a] terrific place [with] terrific programs going on there,” Mr. Belcaster said. “ … I had all incentives for spending the next year there. I came close to signing on a contract until Tim Devine came knocking at my door and asked me to take a look at Northside.”
The more Mr. Belcaster became aware of Northside’s offerings, the more appealing a teaching position at the school became to him. He faced several obstacles, all of which he handled successfully, considering that he is now starting his fifth year as a Northside teacher.
“I gotta tell ya this was one of the most difficult jobs that I’ve ever attempted to obtain,” Mr. Belcaster said, “which again is another measure of success to those who built this school. The hurdles I had to climb [over] as a teaching applicant was quite pronounced in terms of submitting writing samples, coming in and teaching a lesson, being observed by department colleagues, [and] interviewing. I was [also] asked to grade some papers. It was one of the toughest jobs to obtain that I ever had to work for. But it made it all worthwhile once I was invited to join the faculty.”
Although Mr. Belcaster enjoys teaching, he sometimes considers teaching at Northside “a fake teaching job,” explaining the difference between the relaxed setting at Northside and the difficulties of teaching elsewhere.
“This is a place where teachers can come into the classroom and teach,” Mr. Belcaster said, “because students come into the classroom desirous to learn. This is a building where lots of magical things take place. Students who are obviously off the charts, who are smart and have more tremendous initiative, tremendous energy, and tremendous curiosity about the world, and are passionate about solving the world’s problems. As a result of that, we have classes that are filled with a context of learning. This is not a building where we’re looking out for discipline issues, clearing up fights, looking to tamp down misbehavior. Sadly, we should have a situation in America where all classes are like classes at Northside.”
Most people often wonder why Mr. Belcaster decided to leave a career in law to pursue one in teaching.
“I love to view that, with the exception of the job we do as parents, there is no more important job than the job of a teacher,” Mr. Belcaster said. “As I watched my own kids get older …, I took a step back and asked myself ‘how is it that I,’ coming from my working class background, my parents didn’t go to college, many of my peers dropped out of high school, ‘how is it that I obtained so many of the fantastic opportunities that had arisen in my life?’ The answer to that question was that every once in a while, not often enough, I was in a class with a tremendous teacher in the classroom. So I took a step back after a long run of doing some really fantastic things and thought what might I do to enable others to do some of the same opportunities that have come my way. So I thought why not take a stab at being a teacher.”
Mr. Belcaster continued further, sharing a memory from ten years ago in which he and then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama sat down and spoke to each other about where they wanted to go in life and what they wanted to achieve.
“This was the time when Barack was taking a stab at trying to make the world a better place in big ways by running for national political office,” Mr. Belcaster said, “and I said to him, ya know maybe it makes sense for me to try to make the world a better place in a small way by learning how to be a high school teacher. So that’s what I did, and I haven’t looked back, and it’s been one of the great[est] adventures of my life.”
Not only did Mr. Belcaster never regret his choice about leaving a career in law and beginning one in teaching, he also suggests that everyone who has travelled through the path of a student’s life should come back to that path and stand on the opposite side as a teacher, and share their experience with their students.
“I urge students like you, one day, ya know, twenty to thirty years from now, after you’ve become the president of the United States, or a senator, or a doctor, or a musician, or a ballet artist, or a sculptor, or a carpenter, or a plumber, or any job of that sort, [to] think of coming back to where it all started,” Mr. Belcaster said, “[and] share your experiences with the folks behind you.”
Obama and Mr. Belcaster knew one another in their early years of practicing law and have maintained a strong acquaintance for more than a decade and a half.
“[Obama] started at this teeny tiny, nine person law firm in the summer of 1993,” Mr. Belcaster said, “and six months later I joined the law firm. It was a civil rights law firm and we were the two youngest folks in this teeny tiny place. We ate lunch together everyday and took walks together around the block at 10 o’clock in the morning. [It was a] small enough place where you became friends with the people you worked with, small enough that whenever folks, like myself and Barack, were invited to join the firm, special care was placed to ensure that we were assembling a solid collegial legality, much the same way our social science department goes with building its solid collegial faculty. So we’ve known each other since December of 1993, which is coming up to about 16 years or so.”
Mr. Belcaster’s most significant memories include the end of the last school year, when he had the opportunity to become a part of the Obama administration. The Obama administration had expressed interested in Mr. Belcaster joining President Obama’s education team since he had experience in education and civil rights. The importance of such a feat is not that he was able to achieve such a high status opportunity, but because of what came after he asked his AP Microeconomic students to write their final paper on whether or not he should go to Washington, D.C.
“I had expected prior to reading the papers, that the overwhelming bulk of the responses would be to go off to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Belcaster said. “But that didn’t happen. And keep in mind that more than half the authors of these [papers were] seniors [who] were leaving Northside, so they didn’t have any personal interest in urging me to stay behind because they themselves were going off. So I was surprised at the analysis, and [how] many folks wrote that I should stay here because in their view, there is greater value to be had as a classroom instructor than as somebody in Washington or deep in government. And that was memorable because one might think it that high schoolers are teenagers, and they might be awestruck by the idea of being involved in position of stature. But it was refreshing for the students to recognize the value of what takes place in their lives right now in their school.”
One of Mr. Belcaster’s greatest beliefs is that curiosity and passion can take people far in this world.
“In environments such as Northside, that are filled with just brilliance [and] off the charts intelligence, what makes those environments truly sparkle is when the folks fueled with brilliance and intelligence take an interest in the world,” Mr. Belcaster said, “and are curious about the problems of the world and are passionate enough to take a stab at solving these problems. Warren Buffett, another hero of ours says that ‘when you look at people to hire, you wanna look at three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. If you don’t have the first one, the other two will kill you,’ and that’s another important life lesson that I learned along the way. It’s the very smart folks with tremendous energy [who] are dangerous folks because they lack integrity.”
Mr. Belcaster reemphasizes his suggestion to students about coming back to school and teaching once they have fulfilled their initial career goals, though he does warn that one should only do it if one feels that the benefits of the situation outweigh the costs.
“The products of our passion and curiosity quotients outweigh our intelligence quotients, and that’s something that we need to remind ourselves over and over again,” Mr. Belcaster said. “You folks are going to be the movers and shakers of your generation. My advice would be that after you’ve had a great long run of moving and shaking up the world, come back here, think about coming back here when you’re 40 or 50 years old and share some of the life experiences with the folks behind you. But don’t do that kind of thing forever either. When the benefits of what you are currently doing are outweighed by the costs of what you are doing, it’s time to do something different.”
