What does it mean to teach? This is no longer a pedagogical discussion. Your answer to this question, and the actions you take based on your answer in your classrooms, your buildings, your districts, your communities matter to the students who need you. We must take back the narrative and stop letting others answer this question for us. This starts with how we talk about our profession with each other. Being a teacher or administrator in 2022 absolutely comes with a lot of challenges. Don’t give in to the Yabuts and the Icanots that may be lurking at the edges of conversations with colleagues. They are so tempting. Everyone needs to vent. Set a time limit for venting, then work to turn the conversation to a new book you are reading, a podcast you like, something that went well in your lesson, a student that had an “ah hah moment”, or brainstorming on how to support or stretch students. We are better together than working in isolation. Lift up colleagues who need your support. Research shows that teachers are most likely to leave the profession within the first 5 years. This is happening more and more. Informal mentorship is so important, and is a benefit both for the mentees and the mentors. To teach means that you are more than a content expert. You know how to co-construct knowledge with peers and students.
Talk positively about teaching in front of your students. We need future teachers. Grow them in your classrooms. Celebrate their successes with them after they spend time in the “learning pit” wrestling with new learning. Ask them what strategies worked or didn’t work for them. Listen to their questions and their thinking. You are their advocate. You can give them opportunities to amplify their voice in your room, or opportunities to try out their thinking. They are looking to you to help them see where they are and where they can go next in their learning. To teach means you can meet students where they are and weave connections between prior learning and new learning, and learning and the authentic world, making sure all your students are in that net that you are creating.
Write an elevator speech. How would you respond when someone makes a statement to you that sounds something like, “well anyone can be a teacher…”. This is no idle conversation. There is a very real shortage of teachers and substitute teachers. Legislators in Ohio and in legislatures across the United States have redefined the criteria to obtain a subsitute license, and a temporary teaching license. People think they know what it means to teach because they have been students in classrooms or watched classes on Zoom during the pandemic, and have been on the receiving end of teaching. Being on the receiving end leads to stereotypical descriptions of what teachers do since what is taken into consideration is the output. What is missing is the input, the many threads that are being pulled together leading up to that learning moment to weave the lesson or engage with the students in the first place. Where we need to focus our advocacy is on framing the decision making not on the output but on the outcome. To teach is to blend the mindsets of a scientist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, an artist, a coach, a counselor, and an inventor into one person who then chooses to do his/her best each day to make connections with children so that the children feel heard, and safe, and can move their learning forward to accomplish their goals. To teach is to respond in real time to a steady stream of evidence of learning and be a flexible thinker. That is the outcome. Teachers have developed an expertise that empowers them to accomplish this outcome. Start your elevator speech with a statement about what to teach means to you. End it with the outcome you hope to see from your work.
Thank you for choosing to teach.
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