When studying to become a teacher you spend a lot of time asking and being asked, "What is a teacher?" Of course in some ways the answer is easy: you get paid to impart knowledge onto others. (I add pay because I'm sure most of us impart knowledge onto others daily without being recognized for it.) But naturally teaching is about a lot more than just, well, teaching. It's about caring, it's about believing, and it’s about giving up something for the benefits of others.
I've spent a lot of time in a lot of different schools located in Western Mass, and I've spent a of time going to schools in Eastern Mass. I've both seen and had teachers who simply teach, and seen and had teachers who go way beyond what is expected or sometimes even needed from them. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes me a teacher, or what will make me a teacher, and what makes anyone a teacher, and in all my time I've come up with a list of the "top 5 what’s" that make someone a teacher, rather than just someone who teaches.
No one, not even the greatest teacher, is entirely selfless, but all teachers are have some certain selfless tendencies. Teaching is hard because, like most anyone else, you have a lot of ideas. You have ideas about political structures, the state of the world, what makes for good child rearing, what the best kind of ice cream is, and what books should be revered. You've got ideas on what you want to do with your life, what you want to accomplish, and how you're going to accomplish them. You've got plans, you've got opinions, you've got ideas...and in order to teach you have to be willing to let them go.
Of course I don't mean let them go completely, just at times. In any given class you have impressionable students with rich family lives that can be and probably are different from what you think they should consist of. You've got a district trying to meet the states standards in a way they think will work best, and you've got a community, a government, and a state trying to tell that district how to do it, in a manner that, again, probably isn't what you would think of. And chances are, while you're spending your days arguing with too-clever 10 year olds, you've got in the back of your mind a book you wanted to write, or a place you want to visit, or maybe just that dinner you really want to cook. But that kid, and all the others, is going to exhaust you, and you're going to have to let things go, at least for the time being.
One of the greatest qualities a teacher needs to have is the ability to simply step aside and let it go for now. Knowing when to sigh, smile and nod is a great tactic for any long meeting, for any know-it-all child, and for any, temporarily, lost dreams. Teaching is exhausting enough without fighting all the time, and that fighting can do much more harm than good. That being said...
In a world that really, really likes to demonize teachers, teachers need to be able to stand up for themselves. Gone are the days were student achievement is based on, you know, the student. Now is the time where, if little Jerry got a bad grade, you must have missed something. I'm not saying this is totally wrong, in fact I think it's helped school systems realize their weaknesses in a lot of cases, but I am saying there are people, students, parents, principals, curriculum leaders, districts, states, etc. that will take advantage of this. And a teacher has to be able to put their foot down and say enough is enough.
In the school I am working in right now there are a lot of shifts happening as the common core comes into fruition and district adjusts to take on more schools with fewer teachers. And a lot of the teachers I am working with are exhausted by the meetings they are having with parents and officials alike. But a lot of them are also squaring their jaw and saying, "Enough is enough. You don't need to recognize everything we do, but you sure as hell aren't going to bully us into thinking we're not doing enough." Teachers are the black sheep of any system, they get blamed for all the woes others have, and really, only the strongest ones will survive.
I suppose that this really sort of sums up the two previous points, but in a different way. My last week as a teacher was sort of hell as everything I had planned went down the drain when a major family crisis happened. I was devastated I’d worked so hard to get to this week and I'd had it all planned out. But I took a deep breath, and I adjusted.
And that's what all teachers need to be able to do. Plans go to waste constantly. Sometimes students just cannot get it together. Other times there are last minute assemblies, major state tests get changed, snow days happen, or halfway through the year you get handed a new curriculum. From the little to the big, teachers need to be flexible, otherwise they, and their students, will suffer.
A successful teacher is a caring teacher. They're the sort of teacher who worries about their students, who believes all their students can succeed, and who works to make everything ok for their students, at least while they're in the class. Teachers need to care because their jobs are demanding and if they don't everyone will suffer. Caring teachers know that if they make things fun for their students, they're going to be fun for them too. And caring teachers know that if they make things safe for their students, their students are going to open up to them. Classrooms run off social dynamics, both student-student, and student teacher. A caring classroom is going to do better because there will be more of an ebb-and-flow to the classroom in general. There's discussion in place of lecture, listening instead of, well, lecture, and frenzy instead of boredom. Teachers need to care, and they need to care a lot.
The other side of it is that teachers need to care about what they do. That is, they need to really believe that education makes a difference, and have opinions about what education is like in their school, district, state, and country. Caring teachers will work to make education work for all, and that is a huge part of what education is.
The most successful teachers I have met love what it is they do. They love working with kids, they love spending every day exploring new topics, they love discussion and argument, they love learning, they love structuring their classes, they love their students incredible views, they love everything down to the sticky notes they use and the pencils they write with. Teachers who love what they do find what is one of the most challenging jobs easy, or at least enjoyable, because they go to work knowing that they are doing what they want to be doing. Loving what you do makes a teacher a teacher, and not just someone who imparts knowledge. It's what allows teachers to let things go at times, and gives them the passion to fight. It's what makes them shrug and switch plans, even when they spent all night working on those plans, and it's what makes them mean it when they ask their students whom their nights were. You can't be a teacher if you don't love what you do, you really can't.