As my educational career draws closer to an end, I find myself looking back. Back at the subjects I was good at and the subjects I was not so good at. At the people, places, and things I learned. And, of course, at the teachers. And as I look back, it's interesting to note that while I had my share of bad teachers and many, many good teachers, it was truly rare to come across a great teacher.
A great teacher is hard to define, but I will try to do so anyway. A great teacher requires aptitude in their chosen subject, humor to keep things interesting, patience to deal with everything we put them through, empathy to try to see things from a student's perspective and perseverance to keep going for those few who make it all worth it.
A great teacher doesn't just teach, and they certainly don't just tell. They involve you. They inspire you. They make you curious. They strike your interest. And to do that, they have to be passionate.
Looking back, it was easy to see which teachers actually had a passion for their subject and which had just chosen the profession for whatever reason. And in hindsight, the teachers you liked and the teachers that actually had your best interests at heart were generally not in the same category.
I had a math teacher once that was funny, energetic, and told the greatest stories. And as far as math classes go, it was probably the most bearable as far as math classes go. Although that may have been due to the fact that we learned little to nothing about math. And so while I enjoyed the class, it actually came back to bite me the year after when my next teacher assumed we had covered everything the year before and plunged right into whatever x and y were doing these days.
On the other end of the spectrum, I had an English teacher was amazing. She was tough and real and didn't take crap from anyone. She was a lawyer, so don't ask me what on earth she was doing at a small, Catholic middle school. It certainly wasn't for the money and it certainly wasn't because she was afforded a whole lot of love from us. In fact, we were more apt to love the history teacher who just put on movie after movie to "supplement our learning."
But I distinctly remember her (my English teacher), putting on the movie Dead Poet's Society and most of the class talked through it. Those of us who watched it to the end were rather confused. Spoiler alert: Why would this kid kill himself just because he couldn't be in a play? And I forgot the movie pretty much entirely until this past year, when I watched an Apple commercial in Advertising Fundamentals. The commercial employed the use of Robin Williams' speech from the movie, and this time, it brought me nearly to tears.
Perhaps because now that I'm older I can actually understand it, or perhaps because it just hit me in just the right way, but I got to thinking, the greatest teachers aren't necessarily the ones you liked the most. The greatest teachers were the ones who challenged you as a person. The ones who forced you to grow into what you had the potential to be. So to those teachers who come in early and stay late, those who pour their hearts out to students who will just never really care, and who see talent before they can even see it themselves, I just want to say, thank you.
