Teaching is a unique profession. Certainly for the reasons
you think—squirrelly kids, parents, bells. However, there is one more reason. A
reason that is dear to all teachers, and likely something you would only
know if you were a teacher . . . . or were told. And I am about to tell you.
Teaching is unique because there are students. These youths
spend a large portion of their day with us, sharing, learning, and growing. As
teachers, instead of building an object or completing a task (both worthy
pursuits), we are impacting the lives of young people.
Teaching is unique because students remember their teachers.
We make a difference. This last Sunday, I took my three boys to a parade. While
riding lightrail, this young lady cane up to me and said, “Hi”. There was something
familiar about her face, a hint of the past, but I could not place it in this
context. Then it hit me—this is Sarah, a student of mine from 7 years ago. I
was awash with memories.
I introduced Sarah to my sons. We talked and she told me and
how important my 7th grade English class was for her to gain
confidence and see the beauty of words. She told me that I was an influential
teacher in her life and wanted to thank me. This sort of conversation is unique to teaching.
Sarah is attending Portland State University, doing well,
fully taking advantage of advanced learning. I feel proud to have been part of
this person’s life. It may sound odd, but I feel that I am leaving a legacy, a
living legacy, in the lives of students.
Teaching is a unique profession because it has a hand in
shaping the future.
Teachers and students and parents are about to embark on the summer. This is a great time to think back over the last year and recognize how truly important the year has been. To the veteran teachers, I am sure you have had an experience like this, your own "Sarah". How did it feel?
Thanks for the review, Travis. We approach teaching and learning similarly. As you have interest, please share more insights about what you see as “necessary” for teaching. I think it’s a good dissertation topic. Best wishes with boxing. My ole guy’s venture was BMX racing, mostly with teens and 20s, but even the 5 and 6 year olds kept me working over those obstacles. 🙂 Enjoy.
@Bob Heiny, Two responses to your last comment. (1) You wrote– L’Amour’s statement in the “Education of a Wandering Man” that he left school early, because it got in the way of his learning. I completely agree. I would have done the same thing. I have also seen quotes like this or heard stories like this from my friends and colleagues. If being in school was hindering my learning, I would have left. However, and here is the key to why that statement and I will never agree. I don’t get in the way of student’s learning. Students do not feel that way with me. I don’t find it hard to believe that students would enjoy learning and enjoy the teacher of that learning. L’Amour must have had a bad teacher or someone who was not a teacher at all, an adult in the role of “learning” killing the act of learning by not being versed in the skills of teaching. It takes more than content knowledge to be a teacher. Teaching is a skill. Content is a thing.
(2) In response to that 8-year-old that had to “dumb” herself down to the class, that is too bad that she did not have a teacher skilled at the art of teaching in order to meet her needs. That adult would not classify as a teacher. However, at the same time, if a person (in this case a kid and it still holds true) cannot make the most out of any situation, then that person is unskilled at the art of learning. Any student, at any age, will learn if that student has a skilled teacher in the art of teaching and (AND) that student takes advantage of the situation. Saying something like “This class is too easy” or “I have to dumb myself down” shows that the student is not really as capable as they think.
To illustrate this last point. I have taken up boxing. I am terrible at it. That is one of the reasons I started. I wanted; I wanted to do something that was completely new, foreign, and in which I had no previous skills at all. This would force me to struggle and learn. I would feel frustration and glory. Anyway, in the class I take, I am the lowest skilled person. Last night I sparred with a man who had been boxing for 25 years. This man could have said, “I cannot spar with Travis because I would have to ‘dumb’ myself down to do so” but he did not. If he had said that, he would have missed an opportunity to learn because he would have closed himself down to the idea of learning. Again, he did not say that. What he did was take the opportunity to learn something because even with 25 years of boxing experience, he had never sparred with me so I was a new entity with a new style (if you call it that). He took advantage of the situation to learn. He found a way to learn. He also had a teacher who was skilled at the art of teaching.
Learning is a marriage of want on both the student and teacher’s part. Both have to be good at it and willing to work at it. The good news is that strong teachers, like me and my colleagues, can bring students around to “wanting” to learn due to the relationships we create and the amazing knowledge we help the student uncover.
I have had brilliant students, high IQs I am sure, take a physics class I was teaching and not do well because they came in with the mentality of “I’m smart. Too smart for this class.” In the end, they weren’t. They were taking second year calculus, some of them, and failing physics because they thought the material was too easy so they would not have to engage themselves. It took awhile, and a few failures/stumblings, for them to realize they had to change the way they interacted with the learning. And lucky for them, they had a good teacher who could both teach and who knew that failure was a crucial part of the learning process and could gauge when to apply certain teaching strategies (skills) to aid the student to discovery.
As far as your question for “what necessarily makes teaching unique. Key word: necessarily”…I will let someone else answer that. I feel I have already. I feel that it may also be something I see and a way I view the world which you are not going to accept.
Cheers.
Thanks, Travis, for sharing your insight. Glad to learn that you don’t see the responses of people to whom I refer.
Yes, perhaps 50% is too high; that’s my estimate based on informal samples, not objective data.
Not to challenge your description, because I take you at your word.
The people to whom I refer know how to “do school.” Some who stay in or return receive the highest honors available.
Yet, each in his or her own way, says something similar to L’Amour’s statement in the “Education of a Wandering Man” that he left school early, because it got in the way of his learning. That statement stunned me when I first read it shortly after publication, so I started challenging the idea by listening differently to learners, teachers, students, alumni. What I heard did not support my challenge.
Thus, I still have the same Q: what necessarily makes teaching unique. Key word: necssarily. I wonder if it’s learning at a personally satisfying rate, however defined, but don’t know of data addressing this point.
Since you asked by inference, the youngest person to whom I refer was 8 in the 3rd grade (tested reading at 12th grade level and said she had to “dumb down” to the class – her words; still floating at top of classes in high school, acts civilized, and is bitter toward school people) and the oldest was in his 90s.
That said, thanks also for showing respect to those in your classes by “dressing up.”
@Bob Heiny, you wrote, “They respect learning, not schooling and teaching, except as a therapy. They’re bright, informed, talented, successful (by standards you’d likely accept), etc.”
Is the “they” to which you refer young people or adults? See, I have not had the experience that you have had. I would not say somewhere around 50%. I would say that an overwhelming majority (statistically significant) of the youths with which I interact want to interact with me and revel in the time we have. This is not because I am such a “cool” or “fun” person. It is because I am a great teacher and I instruct students in a way that allows them to go from not knowing to knowing. Their thirst for getting to the “knowing” part keeps them coming back for more. They want to interact because they see that I am someone who can help them. To push me aside would only reduce their ability to get what they want–learning.
So, it is not that I disagree with your last comment. It has a logical premise behind it. However, in that logic I think that people would accept what you say without deep thinking or experience. Just because it sounds logical (reasonable) does not mean that that is what happens. In my experience, what you describe does not happen.
Cheers,
True, people want teachers to get out of their way. Those people? Often teenagers. What do we know about adolescent development? They are wired to resist authority in order to form their own identity. It is the way their brains work. Sure, they’d be content for us to get off their backs and let them be. They’d probably want the same from their parents. I don’t think that kids’ resistance of parents–that the kids wants the parent out of their way, to let them be–is enough to conclude that parenting is not an important and worthwhile, perhaps even unique, endeavor. Should parents then simply get out of the way? I bet that if they who want the teachers out of the way are truly educated, enlightened folk as you suggest, and if they chose to eschew teachers because teachers are the roadblock to their development, they’d only gravitate to a different form of “teacher.” A guru, a mentor, a professor… Just because there is resistance doesn’t mean that the work isn’t important.
I think some who want teachers out of the way are subscribers to “those who can, do; those who cannot, teach” thus believing that teachers are not worthy because of their choice of avocation. I have many students who enter my classroom thinking they are better than me because of the jobs their mommy or daddy might hold. They treat me like a servant. That behavior and misconception is quickly corrected.
Thanks, Travis and Mark, for elaborating what you consider unique about teaching. I get the transactional and relationship parts. They make sense, as do the personal judgments / opinions about their inferred importance.
However, I have worked (taught, supervised, watched, etc.) with enough people in and out of classrooms to recognize that an uncounted number (close to 50% over the decades?) want teachers to get out of their way, leave them alone. Let them get on with their lives. They see teachers as threats to personal development, not saviors. They directly challenge the idea that teaching is “necessarily” unique or good for everyone. They respect learning, not schooling and teaching, except as a therapy. They’re bright, informed, talented, successful (by standards you’d likely accept), etc.
Their challenge is the part I’m trying to understand – about the “necessary” inference in your statements. It’s an interesting part of the puzzle that teachers address daily.
Teaching, despite being ubiquitous (consider the sheer numbers of people employed by the profession) is unique because I don’t know of other professions demand the close, ongoing, and meaningful relationship where one party’s goal is to constantly guide the other’s toward self-actualization and personal development. Not every citizen can name a practitioner of another professional whose relationship, comments, support, lessons or guidance have helped define their identities. Many (of course, not all) can name a teacher who has done so.
Teaching is also unique because of its ubiquity because nearly every citizen has experienced formal education some degree, and as a result, many feel that they, as former inhabitants of a student desk, are therefore somehow endowed with some special knowledge or expertise in the art and science of teaching as well as the delicate balancing act that is school funding. It seems like everyone has an opinion on education and educators, and many who express those opinions speak with authority vested in them by virtue of having occupied those desks for a few years. Teaching is unique because its ubiquity makes the masses think they understand it all and are qualified to criticize.
@Bob Heiny, I would love to answer your question as to why I think teaching is unique. However, in doing so, I will repeat the overall point to my post–teaching involves working with people, especially, and certainly in my case, young people. There are other jobs out there that work with people, but other than teaching, there are few jobs that work with young people.
One could argue that a coach, or community center director, or daycare provider works with young people too. And to this I would say, “Yep, they too have a unique position in making an impact on how future adults see the world.”
When I painted houses, I made little impact on the world around me. I made a living; I met good people; I did a great job and made sure to give the customer the best; and I was able to build my own skills. However, as far as feeling like I was changing or impacting the social fabric of the world around me, I did not feel that I did. Again, as mentioned in the post, this is not to belittle jobs like me painting. It is to serve the purpose of comparison as comparison often provides a way to look (hopefully with more depth) at an idea.
As a teacher, I know that I can work with a student on skills and that, by the end of a period of time, this student will end up a stronger individual, more capable. That’s a pretty heady position in which to be. Does this mean that there are no other jobs that impact youth? No. Does this mean that all jobs other than teaching are pointless? No.
In the end, whether I believe teaching to be unique the use of “unique” provides a rhetoric tool and allows me to connect ideas with words.
Great tie, Travis. Good to see you representing something special by your “costume.” Congrats for receiving feedback from Sarah, and Mark for receiving the letter you carry. I think many of us gladly share such moments with both of you.
This is meant as a respectful request. I’m curious why, Travis, you think teaching is unique among what and whom? I don’t see teaching as necessarily unique.
I am nauseated at times by the glory teachers tend to shine upon themselves. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities afforded me by becoming an NBCT in the state of Washington, but hearing how wonderful we teachers are, how important our jobs are, how we blaze the trail, lay the path, open the doors…it gets to be a bit much and I’m already a cynical guy who scoffs at the “all you have to do is set a goal and have a dream and the world will be gumdops and pretty flowers…” as I picture cavities and an early frost.
That said, it’s the time of year for me as a 9th and 10th grade teacher where former students–days away from graduation–are sneaking into my room and leaving notes for me hidden in my desk, in my coffee cup, under my keyboard, or as one boy did the other day, just coming in to interrupt my instruction, walk up, shake my hand without a word, and walk out. I carry a letter in my wallet that was given to me by a student I had when he was a freshman–he gave it to me when he graduated last year–and it’s one of those great notes we get and it will probably be in my wallet until it disintegrates from wear.
Yes, Nancy, it is a tie. All part of my costume.
And the relationships are long-term (at least 180 days), fairly intensive, purpose-driven, and mutually interactive. There are lots of “people” jobs which have some of these elements, but I can’t think of another one that has them all. I don’t think you’re the only teacher who feels a little embarrassed by “I touch the future–I teach” language–but it’s true that there are very few opportunities to shape lives, and it’s worth keeping that in mind, every day.
Is that a tie you’re wearing, Travis?