On teaching 9/14/12

My belief is that teaching is a great art. An art not easily taught or learned or judged. Just as a masterpiece can't be created in a paint by numbers kit; so great teaching can't be created or judged just through numbers. This incessant attempt to improve our education system through judging teachers on their student's test scores is only a simplistic solution to a complex problem. To those who have only ever been students in their lives, this simplistic solution may seem viable, yet it holds a falsity within it's very premise. Teaching a CHILD is not teaching a SUBJECT. Within the folds of teaching lie the delicate interactions and threads of human interaction, of trust, of give and take, the lightning quick judgments and decisions which must be made to adjust the learning conditions to help the learner to go further and beyond where they are in their understanding at that moment. No curriculum, computer, program or even an untrained person can take another individual beyond, can push just gently but persistently enough to bring another person to a new threshold of understanding, then beyond again. Day after day, through the beginnings of the new, unknown relationship to the deep knowing of one another as the journey we just traveled together. This journey is then forever within each of us who has had a great teacher and lies within each teacher as a living seed of nourishment for the next trial, and passed on to the next student who will benefit from the experiences the teacher gained.

As we watch a nation of teachers marching for what seems trivial issues; why strike over being evaluated by test scores? Why worry about being let go when your seniority prices you out of your school district? If you're a good teacher you have nothing to worry about. This is completely untrue and in fact exacerbates rather than solves any problems withing our education system. Teachers know that these evaluation techniques and policy mandates hurt our children. Children benefit when bad teachers go through an extensive evaluation process with people working with them to improve their craft then if that fails ending the process with a new career. Children benefit when teachers with the seeds of experience from countless learners within their minds and hearts can use these for the next generation. Teachers supported in using the techniques and skills which work with individual children and allowed the freedom to alter, fashion and REALLY teach students will benefit our future for generations to come.