Passion

I have been thinking a lot this past year about what makes a good teacher.  For the first time in my career, I have been in the position where I am evaluating a teacher based on a year's worth of work.  It is something that I think is still very difficult to define.  Sure you can set rubrics of dos and don'ts and see if the teacher is implementing best practices.  I have seen teachers though who do everything right and yet their students still do not learn.  I have also seen teachers who approach instruction differently and they are very successful.  When I walk into a classroom, within minutes, I can tell whether a teacher does their job well or not.  It is hard to describe.  How do you measure engagement, excitement, energy, passion?  How do you truly measure learning?  These are all things I have been grappling with this year. 

I think the thing I took away from all this is that there is not a magic recipe to making a great teacher.  Sure there are basic principles that most good teachers follow.  There is not a prescription however.  Good teachers are constantly doing things differently.  What does make a good teacher however is how passionately they approach their work.  Kids are smart and extremely perceptive.  They know when their teacher cares about them.  They can tell when teaching is more than just a job to that teacher.  They can also tell when a teacher has given up or is just trying to make it through the end of the school day.  When the teacher gives up, many times the students do as well. 

I guess the point I am trying to make is to be a Superhero teacher, you have to teach with passion.  I was watching a show about the band Imagine Dragons and a quote from the lead singer Dan Reynolds stuck with me.  He said a piece of advice he was given at one point was that if he was to do music, he couldn't do it just because he wanted to do music.  He had to do it because he had to do music.  There is power in that.  To him music had to be his calling in life.  It couldn't be just hobby or a fun job that he wanted to do.  He needed to approach his music with passion.  I feel the same way about teaching.  There are very few professions where you make a lifelong impact everyday you go to work.  There is a huge responsibility in that and if you are not invested in it, it will show in your work.  The kids will know.  One of the things I am constantly thinking is that as a teacher, you will be remembered forever.  What do you want the students to remember about you? 

What is a teacher?

I know I haven't posted in a while so there are a lot of different things that I have been thinking about over the last few months.  Since I last posted, I have graduated with my Master's degree, finished the school year, started summer work on curriculum and other administrative items, presented at TEPSA about 21st Century Learning and Social and Emotional Learning among other things.  All this change has given time to reflect on what I am doing and why I am doing it.  It has given me the opportunity to reset and recalibrate my educational expectations.

About a month ago I was having a conversation with my wife (or complaining to her would be more accurate) about how as an administrator, I sometimes am not seen as a teacher anymore.  Her response was something like, "well you aren't a teacher anymore."  I got rather defensive when she said this.  Of course I am a teacher.  I may not have my own classroom and students, but that doesn't mean I stopped being a teacher.  My response to her was, "The day I stop being a teacher, is the day I should stop being an administrator."  I mean that too.  One of the problems I feel a lot of school have is that the leadership, whether it is campus leadership or central office, at some point along the way stop being teachers.  They start to view their role as something else, something loosely connected to education.  My first and most important responsibility is ensure that students learn.  That is the job of a teacher.  If I am not doing that as an administrator, then I don't believe I am doing my job.

So I am interested in other people's thoughts.  What is a teacher?  How should we define that?  Where do campus leaders fit in that discussion?