Old-school teacher contends with tech

Editor’s note: This is one in a series profiling local educators each week.

STAFF REPORT

Booty

Portales High School history teacher Michael Booty has taught for 41 years, and while he has changed in that time, many other things have not, he said.

“I started in 1972, when, example, I think teachers were held in a little bit more esteem than they are today. As far as the expectations, I think we still expect the kids to learn something in class, to use their minds, be responsible, be reliable, be respectful,” Booty said, adding that technology is a major change he has had to contend with.

“Again, 40 years ago as a teacher and a coach, we didn’t have to fight iPads and video games and all that stuff. I can remember, the biggest thing I used to get in an argument with was Atari (video game system),” he said. “When I first started teaching, I asked for book reports, and they would all be hand-written and everything, and now they come in — in fact, I have kids that say, ‘can I send it to your email?’ Then they have to show me how to pull it up on the computer. Technology has changed kids’ attitudes a lot.”

Another change that Booty has experienced is a geographic one; he transitioned from teaching in more rural areas to the comparatively larger Portales school district.

“In Capitan — and before that I was at Hatch and Hondo — there were country kids, and these kids here are basically — if you want to call Portales a big city — they’re citified. They’re not used to working on farms and things like that. That’s the biggest difference, I think,” he said.

Through teaching and all of its inherent challenges, Booty has learned that he can still be taught.

“I’ve learned to learn. As my dad told me before I first started teaching, ‘you can go to school all your life, and you never learn anything until you start trying to teach it.’ That’s about the way things are, I believe,” he said. “I have a young man that’s going to do student teaching next semester. I’ve told him the same thing. I said, ‘you can look at that book and everything, but you don’t learn anything until you start trying to teach somebody.’”