I believe!

When I think back to high school I can’t tell you much about what I ‘learned’. I can’t tell you the dates to any great war, I can’t tell you how I felt after reading Hamlet, I can’t even tell the name of most of the equations that were drilled into my brain. So hearing that one might think that high school was a waste, that it didn’t work, but I disagree. While I can’t tell you any of those arbitrary facts I can do something better. I know how to learn those dates, what’s more I can reflect on them and think about them in the context in which those wars happened. I can’t tell you how I felt about Hamlet then but I can tell you about it now. I can dissect it and study it, I can use it to explore myself and my own views. And math, well I can calculate tip! Math’s never exactly been a strong suit for me. I guess my point is that teaching isn’t about learning facts, I don’t even think teaching is about what’s happening right there at that moment when the student sits in their chair and the teacher lectures.

                I believe that teaching is about building people, and what I mean by ‘people’ is someone who can enter the world and function successfully with all the tools handed to them. My students might not know the fancy names for all the types of poems out there years after they graduate but they’ll be able to read a poem and hopefully appreciate it. I believe that those fancy words are useful as tools to help bridge the concept of poetry to a student’s brain, each new tool helps them take one step further down the poetry bridge, to extend the metaphor, and with hope and skill those students will be able to find their way back on their own. I say this because as teachers we won’t be with them the rest of their lives. Eventually we have to let them go and hope they can find their way back on their own. As a teacher I think one of the most beneficial things I can do for my students is give them an opportunity to be independent and prove themselves.