• I believe that we are products of our environment. Throughout our developmental stages in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, we are surrounded by people that set an example. Like sponges, we absorb what is around us. We absorb morality, technique, social customs, and more. Perhaps the most influential source we have throughout these years is our family. The second most influential source, I believe, are teachers.

    We learn so much from our teachers. It’s not just in their job description to teach us. It’s in the title. We see our students, we gauge their skill level, we impart a skill onto them that they likely didn’t know how to do before. We learn about their home lives, we update their families on their progress. And at the end of the semester, we judge how well they’ve done. That last part always seemed off to me. How do you judge a person, especially with something as reductive as a letter or number grade? The answer, I’ve concluded, is that we’re not just judging the student. We’re also judging ourselves, and how well we did in educating them. A failure of a student is a failure of their teacher. After all, we are products of our environment.

    I say this because there is one more aspect to being a teacher that is not in any of the duties I’ve previously listed. That is that teachers are also students. We are learners. We are works in progress. Acclaimed educator and philosopher Paulo Freire once said “Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.” Teaching and learning go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. It’s not just that I am the authority figure and they are the students. To that end, we’re not just grading the students. We are grading ourselves.

    We are always learners. We may grow, become more set in our ways with age, develop our own personalities and ideals, but we remain learners. Yet, in so many classrooms, it’s treated as a trickle down process. The teacher hands out facts, the students remember the facts, and are tested on their ability to remember facts. My aim as a teacher is to bridge these two roles. I believe that, if the student believes the teacher to not just be an authority figure, but a peer, they’re more willing to listen. They accept their role as learners more easily if they believe their teacher holds the same title. It’s not just that teachers are role models to the students. We are role models to each other. That is how we will learn. Together.

  • What makes a teacher?

    Your answer to that question is probably going to be unique. Teachers can be a lot of things.

    Educators. Mentors. Knowledge givers. Role models.

    You probably think of teachers as a compilation of all three, and some more that I didn't mention.

    Now, another question. Do teachers start out as teachers? Do teachers just have that "it" factor and it's only a matter of time before they delve into the professional field? Or are they sculpted, molded, and in a way, forged into those people?

    That's me. I was forged.

    My personal school experience was, in a word, complicated. I went through phases of being an overachiever. I went through phases of sullen melancholy about school in general. Phases where I idolized my teachers, and phases where I didn't care. I've seen the spectrum of students, because I've been the spectrum of students. I've been the person yelling at a teacher for only giving me a 98 on an exam. I've also re-taken a test because I had failed the last one, badly.

    What forged me into a teacher was, ironically, another teacher. My high school art teacher, specifically. I was always driven to art as a hobby, something to serve as a form of escapism and creative outlet. I loved my Art Teachers throughout school, because it allowed me to learn about the one thing I never failed to want to learn more about: making better art. Drawing, painting, digitally sketching, I wanted to know all the techniques. This teacher made me especially driven, being a former professional book cover artist herself decades prior to her teaching career. Her old work astounded me. The skill, the craftsmanship, the patience for what it took to create great art. I wanted to squeeze knowledge out of her like a wet sponge.

    Throughout my high school years, I spent every free period I had with this teacher. I volunteered to model for her Figure Drawing class. I helped her make props for the school play. I spent my lunch periods sitting in on her other classes, hoping there was some new technique I could gain by osmosis. She invigorated my love for art like no other person had aside from myself. There was no doubt. I was going to be an artist.

    Then one day, I stopped. I was in the middle of listening to her speech about shading on portraits. And I looked at her. Her face, beaming with pride. A bright smile on her face. It hit me. I wasn't the only one in this room enjoying the lesson. She was enjoying the art of teaching it to me. She was enjoying creating knowledge in my head that didn't exist before, an invisible transfer of data from her brain into my own. That light in her eyes was the fire that forged me into a new path. I didn't just want to learn, I wanted what she was feeling. That joy of seeing someone else learn from you. Seeing someone else fulfill their goals, while you were the helping hand that got them there.

    Not just joy of creation through my own art, but the joy of creating other artists.

    That became my goal. To be a teacher. To help others achieve.

    To be an educator. A mentor. A knowledge giver. A role model.

    What makes a teacher?

  • If you're reading this, you're probably looking for inspiration. Guidance. Something to read when it feels like you're not reaching where you want to be as a teacher yet, or maybe lost something it feels like you had before. Maybe you've become jaded, maybe things seem bleak, maybe you're wondering if teaching is the right thing for you. I know, because I've been there. But there's always one thing that I've clung to in order to keep my passion going.

    Picture if you will, a GameBoy. Those little videogame handheld gadgets that you're probably intimately familiar with if you grew up in the 90s. And if you knew GameBoy, you also knew it's biggest cash cow product: Pokemon.

    Don't worry, we're still talking about teaching here. Bear with me.

    The object of Pokemon was, as the cartoon tagline said, to "catch 'em all." However, Pokemon had an interesting quirk to it. Sometimes, you had to make a choice between certain Pokemon in the story, and the other options were forever locked from you as a consequence. That's not very "catch 'em all" minded, is it? Well, Pokemon agreed. Enter the trade cable.

    You see, GameBoys had an ingenious little invention. A little USB cord that could be plugged into two different GameBoys for various interactions between them. Therefore, in addition to having certain social functions, the cable served as a way for Pokemon to get you to grab your friends and trade certain Pokemon from their GameBoy to your own. Now you really can "catch 'em all."

    Now, think about teachers. What's the point of a teacher in a classrom? To guide, to be a mentor, but perhaps most importantly, to teach. It's in the name, after all. You're the master of a skill in that class, and the students are there to gain the knowledge in your head, copying it into their own.

    Your students need the Pokemon in your head.

    Unfortunately, until the nature of technology advances far past the point it is now, there is no trade cable to hook from your ear into a student's in order to copy your knowledge directly into their frontal lobe. Therefore, we have to get creative. In order for you to transfer your knowledge of a skill or craft, your Pokemon, you're going to have to communicate. You may use words, sign language, general hand gestures, dance, pictures, or perhaps even smoke signals in order to do this. Through some way, shape, or form, you have to form your own invisible cable from your head into all of your students. It's going to likely be a different process depending on what students you're teaching. You can form a cable one way for one class, and the next one will require a completely different approach. But most importantly, in one way or another, you are creating knowledge in someone's head that previously did not exist.

    Can we take a moment to appreciate how cool that is?

    That's basically magic. There actually is no cable. You are not a GameBoy. You're a teacher. The act of copying your knowledge into the minds of others is nothing short of a magic trick. Creating something out of nothing by waving your arms and flapping your lips in the correct sequence required for those students. That is nothing short of incredible.

    Teaching is magic. We may not wear fancy top hats or adopt rabbits for the purpose of showing them in our lessons, but the magic is there. You are the only one in that room that can do the trick. They rely on you, even if the students don't realize it. Sometimes during times of stress, underfunding, behavioral issues or lack of administration support can get to you. I get that. It happens to all of us. It can be hard to always feel like you're putting on a one man show. But it's still important to remember that you have that magic inside you.

    Through the magical sequence of keystrokes in this letter, I hope I've made you appreciate that.

    Be magical. And give me your Charmander, I only have a Bulbasaur.