On Teachers and Teaching
An Essay on the Influencers & Tastemakers
Image by Yan Krukov from Pexels
The Importance of Great Teaching
Teaching is a profession, a craft, a calling.
Teaching is also a commitment to finding a way, a commitment to serving, and a commitment to the future and greater good.
We have all hopefully crossed paths with a teacher who changed things and us for the better. For many, the high-expectations, craftsmanship, expertise, and caring of a particular teacher made all the difference.
I am a teacher who has worked with tweens, teens, and college students in the classroom, on the field, in the rehearsal room, and on stage for 30+ years. I love and admire the art and skill of teaching. I was also a student who was lucky enough to have been the recipient of the work and caring of a handful of master teachers. The news on teaching is good, and the news is this: Teachers, your work is salient. You are the taste-makers. You are the influencers. The tasks and responsibility that lie before you are heavy, but the rewards of making a positive difference in peoples’ lives are great.
Your students and your work are so important. The days can be long and materials, pay, and respect can be short. When it comes to the trajectory of individuals’ lives however, the importance of great, committed teaching can’t be overestimated.
Is the work hard? It is.
Important things are hard.
Image by Yan Krukov from Pexels
A 10-Point Path Toward Outstanding Teaching
Your students, your work, and your positive influence are important — too important to acquiesce to negativity, a students-are-to-conform mindset, or to outdated, limiting systems. Important, consequential work is hard, and worthy of our efforts and determination to show up, to be professionals, and to do outstanding work day after day after day. Ways forward toward outstanding teaching include:
Welcome the opportunity & responsibility your work presents.
Meet students where they are with a focus on what they can currently do, on potential and on progress.
Tune in to what your students love. Tune in to the things about which they care and get excited.
Have high expectation for students to be kind, respectful scholars who develop their identity as learners as they develop their craft.
Have high expectations for students to learn core academics while affording them the agency and breadth to pursue their own interests.
Reject negativity. Students are not an imposition. Students are not a problem. They are the reason every teaching position, school admin, every staff member, school book and school building exists.
Involve students in brainstorming and decisions.
Ask students what makes them proud, what helps them, how they can help you or another student. Draw out student ideas and skills.
Shift toward service, actualization, and willingness to change your mindset, your methods, & ways of doing with a student if need-be.
Invite and Connect. Get right to what’s cool. Day after day, go right to what chemists, historians, musicians, analysts, and poets actually do.
Teachers will never know all the students their expert work has hooked in a positive way. They will never know how many kids and families upon whom their craft, caring, and professionalism has made an affirming, enduring difference.
Teachers, you are the influencers. You are the taste-makers. Be great. Your work is too important to be anything less.
Invite, welcome, connect, and involve your students in what’s terrific about the world, about particular subject matter, and about them. You’ll never know all the good you are doing and have done.