What makes a good teacher?

Greetings from Vancouver! After many months of trying to get passports and visas for the family, we finally landed on August 1st, which was just in time for me to attend my sister's wedding too. It's definitely good to be back.

This morning, I poked around in my old room looking for some of my collectibles, and ended up finding something a bit more interesting - a binder from over 16 years ago:

As I may have mentioned before somewhere on this blog, I was a teacher in a past lifetime. This collection of remembrances from my time as a student teacher is evidence of that. Most notably, I wrote a "credo statement" on the topic of what makes a good teacher, which surprised me with how much it resonates even now, many years later. I've shared the entire essay below.

Credo Statement, Jan. 29, 2006

I'm not sure when this was or who mentioned it, but someone in our module once mentioned the 'butterfly effect' and how it pertains to teaching. I think it was after Lola confessed to being a little down about the prospect of one person's actions not really affecting the world all that much, and the reply was that as teachers, we affect hundreds - even thousands - of students in our careers, and those students each impact a different area of the world in many ways. In other words, as teachers, we are in fact extremely influential individuals in our world. We may not see any immediate results of our actions, but the results will eventually be apparent - we just have to accept this delayed response to what we do; the world moves at a slow pace, after all.

This idea that any action in this world can potentially have profound impact is one of the major reasons why I love teaching, and is also a reason why I believe that teaching is a profession of the utmost importance in our society. The opportunity to become educated through the Canadian school system has certainly changed the course of my life, and while it wasn't a perfect journey without regrets, I do believe that I owe a huge part of where I am now to having been able to walk down this path. I want to extend this gift of opening up paths to future generations, as the best educators in my school years have done for me, and that is why I think that I should be a teacher of our children.

Education is a complicated concept - vague, fluid, and open to various modes of interpretation. We only need look at the various (at times confusing) curricula around the world to acknowledge that most of us hold different views on what constitutes teaching and learning. Personally, I believe that learning is a lifelong process. In fact, I believe that it is one of the most fundamental processes of our existence; we are placed on this earth to live, to love, and to learn. I also believe that everyone in our society is capable of learning whatever is necessary to effect a change that they want in the world. Human beings are extremely versatile creatures, and it's sad (but also heartening, in a way) to know that most people are satisfied with doing only a tiny fraction of what they're truly capable of. As teachers, I believe that one of our most important duties is to show our students the nearly limitless extents of their true capabilities and potential.

Of course, this is a very idealistic goal to have, and it takes a lot of learning (yes, learning) and experience to effectively ground this and make this work in the face of reality. Not all people learn at the same pace, and obviously not everyone has the same capabilities and potential in each and every discipline or concentration of study. We are each unique, and that's an awesome thing. But one of the biggest issues in schools today is that students are not having their needs and differences properly addressed by the system. It's just not possible with what resources are available, and so the onus is on the teacher to compromise, adapt, and adjust in order to provide a makeshift 'best we can do' situation for each student. This is probably one of the most significant challenges of being a teacher, and I look forward to facing it and coming to terms with it. I believe that as teachers, we also have enormous capabilities and potential; it's up to us to channel this energy and overcome whatever barriers that we may encounter.

Reading that article on 'superteachers' a while ago was an eye-opening experience. If nothing, it reaffirms the fact that it's possible. We can make an enormously positive impact on any student's journey, and I think that I only need to look back to my own teachers who have changed my life for the better to know what it is that I need to do. Personally, I think the classroom must operate on the principle of respect. The students must respect each other's differences, and they must respect the teacher as a mentor who can guide them and help them open up the paths upon which they wish to walk.

This 'mentor frame' and the paramount importance of respect is what I see myself encouraging in my own classroom. With the understanding that we are each special people and each capable of amazing things, I can work together with my students to achieve their goals. When my students leave my classroom for the last time, I want them to remember me not only as the teacher who taught them whichever subject they were learning from me, but also as the mentor who showed them that - with respect, diligence, and a belief that we are each capable of so much - worlds of exciting opportunities and reachable dreams open up to us.

Looking back on this, I think it's overly dramatic and unnecessarily wordy, but I still agree with much of what I wrote. That said, knowing what I know now, the essence can be compressed into just a few tweet-sized sentences:

Teaching is a critically important profession in society. I believe that learning is a lifelong process. One of the biggest issues in schools today is that students are not having their needs and differences properly addressed by the system. When my students leave my classroom for the last time, I want them to remember me not only as their teacher for a particular subject, but also as a mentor.

Perhaps most interestingly, I failed at being a teacher. I was young, idealistic, and woefully bad at managing a classroom of teenagers, nevermind actually getting most of them to internalize some prescribed learning outcomes. During my second teaching practicum, I was basically told to quit and return after I've gained more classroom experience. I did get more experience (by teaching English in Japan for a year), but I never returned to teaching in public schools.

To be completely honest, I think I still wouldn't be a good teacher in public schools even now. I have continued to be passionate about education, and obviously I enjoy mentoring others, but I've since realized that I would never be at my best in a classroom setting.

I have no regrets about my short-lived journey as a public school teacher. Instead, today's events have reminded me that those challenges in the education system remain, and are still unsolved at scale in traditional classrooms. Does a solution exist that involves technology? I'm not sure where that thought leads, but it will surely be on my mind in the coming days.