Being a Teacher

A friend once told me out of the blue that he would have made a good teacher.  I was a couple years into the profession at the time, and inquisitive enough to ask him what led him to that conclusion.  After all he was fairly successful at his particular business, and I couldn't help but wonder why he would consider such philanthropy.

"Because I am smart," he replied.

I didn't argue that point.  He was indeed smart, even brilliant in my scope of vision.  I immediately found myself comparing his brain to mine.  Really there was no comparison.  His capacity for book learning far excelled mine, yet I knew his reasoning was faulty because he had no idea of what teaching is.  I imagine his idea of teaching was like that of the popular movie The Matrix where people are essentially turned into computers, and certain intelligence programs are simply downloaded into their brains.  Or maybe Field of Dreams, "If you teach it, they will learn."  If only it were that easy.

What he didn't know was that "teaching" meant doing more with less.  Every year.  With less money, fewer teachers, and more students in each classroom, the teacher still has to make the student increase his or her knowledge so much so that the government legislates that every student must make a certain score on a particular test, or the teacher is a failure.  The teacher has to find a way to make that happen or be ridiculed to scorn from the opinionated and tax-paying community.

It doesn't matter if the student makes a habit of staying up all night long on school nights playing video games.

It doesn't matter if the student is the de facto parent because the parents are absentee, hanging out at the casino as the student cooks for his younger siblings, bathes them, then puts them to bed.

It doesn't matter if the student works after school until late to help support the family, then has no time or energy for homework.

It doesn't matter if the student is dealing with tragedy. 

It doesn't matter if the student comes to school drunk or baked.

It doesn't matter if the student is sent to school by his parents to deal drugs.

It doesn't matter that the student is scared in the toilet stall because of bullies.

It doesn't matter that any particular student might just decide he or she doesn't want to learn, no matter what the teacher says.

This list could go on and on, but the point remains that teaching isn't about how smart the teacher is.  Sure, the teacher has to be knowledgeable about his or her subject matter and the pedagogy must be sound.  That's a given (or should be,) but a teacher has to be so much more.

A teacher must be a counselor, a cheerleader, a motivational speaker, a leader, a learner, a translator, a chairman, a petitioner, an advocate, a comic, a...human, doused in humility and sprinkled with kindness, overwhelmed with burden and ever hopeful for the future.

A teacher must care about his or her students passing, not because of threats of being fired because of scores on standardized tests, but because a teacher truly cares about each student, not the student ID number.

This wreck of words comes on the heels of my thirteenth year of teaching.  With mere days left and only final exams for which to prep my students, I find myself slightly philosophical about the matter.  I look across the room at all my students, working diligently, and I think about all the progress they have made throughout the school year, and I think about what their futures hold, and I am overrun by hope and joy, though not necessarily in that order. 

I've thought a lot about that conversation with my friends over the past decade.  I've smiled at victories and pondered defeats and constantly been introspective.  Each student is different and takes a different approach.  It made me wonder if there was one unifying answer to all questions about teaching.

In the end, all I really know for sure is that to be a teacher means to love.