How I became someone who could teach is not why I still do. The origin story is real. It just isn’t the ignition.
I can still see sixth grade like it was this morning.
Small town. Upsala, Minnesota. Grade of about thirty kids. I was not very good at math.
I can see the room. The desk at the front. Me bending over it. My teacher telling me it’s okay. Some people are just not good at math, she said, and never will be.
I’m forty-nine. I still have those details. The posture. The sentence. The way it was offered might have been kindness. The way I held it was bitter, for a long time. Either way, it closed a door.
I don’t know what that fueled in me at the time. Maybe it was more subconscious than deliberate. What I know is the path that followed. By the end of high school I was in Calculus. Not because someone rewrote the sentence for me in seventh grade. Because somewhere under the surface, something like oh yeah, watch this got to work.
That same feeling rode with me through the rest of school. Not always out front. Definitely on.
Geometry. Advanced Algebra. Pre-Calculus. Then Calculus, A- one semester, A the next. By junior and senior year the standardized tests agreed with the climb. Math had become a strength, not a sentence someone wrote over me. The kid who was never going to be good at math had the receipts.
Senior year, last quarter. School still ran on quarters then. Each of us had to teach the class a math topic. I chose imaginary numbers. I don’t know why I landed on that. I must have studied for the big day. I don’t recall. But I taught the room.
When I finished, my calculus teacher stopped me before I left. Something along the lines of: some people are just made to be teachers, and you’re one of them. He said he’d struggled to fully understand imaginary numbers in college, and that because of how I taught it, he understood it better.
I can still name both of them. Most teachers, I can’t. These two made the cut. One closed a door. One opened one. Both taught me a lesson.
Full circle.
Clean story. True, even. Easy to hang the whole career on it: I teach because of those two teachers. I never did. Not in my head, not out loud. Looking closer, the timing doesn’t work that way either.
Sixth grade taught me oh yeah, watch this. Tenacity. That ran hard through school. When I look back, I see a completed loop: she said some people suck at math, I channeled that into watch this, and it ran until the path was proven. Tenacity still sticks with me when I’m challenged. It isn’t what puts me in front of a room of auctioneers for a session. It’s what shows up when a door shuts.
The calculus teacher is a different lesson. Permission. That I might be a teacher. He didn’t invent the path. He backed it. And he planted a seed: you should think about teaching. That seed did not sprout the next morning. Years later I was already teaching and speaking some in the profession when I ran for the NAA board the first time. That door shut. I lost. Then I did what sixth grade taught me. Oh yeah, watch this. Tenacity. I got to work: more teaching, more speaking, more visible in the industry. I ran again a number of years after that. People had forgotten I’d run the first time. That path became seven years of NAA leadership, ending as board chair.
Somewhere in that stretch, while I was already doing the work, the full circle drifted back. Those two teachers. Subconscious, not a plan.
And even now, that calculus teacher doesn’t show up where I expected.
When an auction professional gets it, when something clicks, I don’t think about senior year. I think about the work. The room. That person understanding something they didn’t walk in with.
Where senior year still lives is narrower. Someone says you’re a great teacher. Then it comes back. Quiet gratitude. Reflection on that school-year arc. The seed answering a compliment, not driving the lesson.
The full circle is how I became someone who could stand in those rooms. The climb. The first time teaching got named as mine. Not the ignition.
So what does run it?
A room of auction professionals. Something clicks for one of them. You can see it on their face. That moment. Not senior year. Not sixth grade. That.
I don’t need the origin story to do the work. When someone names it back to me, the school year flickers, then I’m back in the room.
It also gives me empathy. I got told never. I know what that sentence does to a kid bending over a desk. When someone walks into a session already sure they’re not a tech person, or not a marketing person, or not the kind of auctioneer who does that, I don’t start from judgment. I start from I’ve been the book someone closed too early.
Sixth grade left more than one thing. Tenacity when a door shuts. And this: don’t write people off early. The transcript and the standardized tests said the first verdict was wrong. I try not to hand out the same kind of sentence.
Related: Building Your Own Scoreboard, Understanding vs. Doing, Teaching What You’re Still Learning, What Stuck When the Chair Ended, The Valley and the Namer
FAQ
Is your origin story why you teach? No. The full circle is real, but I never thought or said it was the reason. It is how I became someone who could stand in the room, not what puts me there for a session.
What did sixth grade teach you? Oh yeah, watch this. Tenacity. It still shows up when I’m challenged or a door shuts. It is not the daily engine for a classroom session.
What did your senior-year calculus teacher teach you? Permission. That I might be a teacher. He backed the path I was already on and planted a seed. That seed answers quiet gratitude when someone names me a teacher, not the moment a student gets it.
What actually runs the work when you teach auction professionals? The room. Something clicks for one of them. You can see it on their face. That moment. Not senior year. Not sixth grade. That.