- Empathize. If you are not and never have been a student having trouble, a parent, an administrator, or the teacher next door, can you imagine what it must be like? Can you see yourself as the other? This is the beginning of understanding.I recall telling one of my students that she would make a great teacher. Even as a student in high school, she had a strong capacity to empathize. She wanted to be an engineer then. Today she is an outstanding science teacher and activities advisor. Popular and trusted, she has nurtured this ability to imagine life in the shoes of others.
- Create partnerships with families, administrators, and other teachers. It won't be easy. Partnerships of this kind meet resistance. They must be forged. Somebody has to keep trying. Decide that it will be you.Sarah provides consultant teacher services to disabled students. In a meeting to review a student's program, a parent unfairly criticized her. With an amazing display of composure, Sarah listened to the harsh words and kept her focus on the problem. Months later, the parent was working with us as a partner, the anger gone. It all started with Sarah's focus.
- Account to others. Organize. Don't wing it. Be able to explain. Keep careful records. Know when things happened or didn't happen. Let the record show that you did your part; you tried. Don't get caught not knowing facts, dates, times, and numbers.. Be convincing and thorough.A well-meaning father was convinced that his son was just being a normal kid until Linda, the boy's classroom teacher, calmly took this parent through situation after situation of documented attempts to give the student the benefit of the doubt and work on changing his behavior. The evidence was compelling. The father came over to the teacher's side, convinced that his son did indeed have behavior problems, and that he needed to help the teacher.
- Embrace adversity. (This is also known as Face the beast.) Conflict, contention, failure, and fears are the experiences that teach us. To deal with adversity in others while maintaining respect and concern for them is an accomplishment.In addition to handling issues with students, teachers have strong disagreements with colleagues. When I brought Jack and Wendy together to resolve their differences over the way each was handling lunch duty supervision, we had a few moments of frank, somewhat heated, conversation. To their credit, they moved past the anger and frustration and built an effective team, each better understanding the viewpoint of the other. Even in their intense disagreement, they maintained a mutual respect that provided a basis to rebuild after the dispute.
- Practice the long view. Consider the strategic consequences of tactical decisions. Your students will become adults. What will they say of you then? Were you real, honest, fair, and right? What students are today is not what they might become. Are you willing to treat them as if they can become something better, as if they are already on their way?Here's a tale of two teachers. Teacher A labels her students just days after they start class. It's as if A shelves them according to categories: bright, lazy, careless, and mature. A's opinion doesn't change over time. There is no reconsideration. A's alumni, for the most part, don't come back to visit; they don't write letters.Teacher B encourages students from day one to be the best they can be. B's conversations, even when involving discipline, never belittle. B is always reminding them that soon they will be out there making a contribution. B's alumni think often and gratefully of B. They send notes, they call, they stop by. They become friends.
- Demonstrate competency and interest not only in your subject specialty but in others as well. And help students become competent and interested.Steve is a fine artist and art teacher. He also coaches track and is a gifted trumpet player. Yvette teaches math and directs plays and musicals. Karen is a media specialist who helps students daily in their search for information. The message in their actions is clear: There is joy in cultivating competency in everything we do.
- Never quit. Go the distance. Keep believing in your students even when they are failing, disruptive, suspended, or thrown out. Believe in them when they do not believe in themselves. Draw the line, and do what you must, but be ready when your lesson finally takes hold—and they begin to believe.Administrators are teachers too. I see students for discipline problems every day. I want them to know that discipline is not personal; it's business. I can respect them and care for them while I am being the disciplinarian. Often, they come back wiser and willing to take responsibility. In the classroom or the principal's office, it's great to be there when the light finally comes on.
- Accept responsibility for doing the job to the best of your ability every day. Teach responsibility by being responsible.Regardless of which students appear in her classes or which duties she has, Carol is one of those teachers who leaves things better than she found them. She is a self-starter who familiarizes herself with the expectations of the task and then pushes beyond them. Papers are returned promptly, and averages are always available. It seems to rub off. Her students seldom turn things in late, and they catch her enthusiasm.
- Reflect and contribute to reflection. Read, think, write. Communicate your questions and ideas. Share with colleagues. Publish. Teaching is largely a thinking life—forward to a plan, backward to an evaluation. It is constant reflection.Dave is always processing and reprocessing. He takes mental and written notes on everything. Without any major effort beyond his involvement in committees, activities, and conversations, he makes contributions to positive change and growth. His rhetoric is replete with questions, but he does not worry the answers into being. They will come, he always says, in the process. It works.
- Admit mistakes and fix them as soon as possible. Don't wait until tomorrow. Make fixing a top priority. It solidifies credibility. It keeps you humble. It teaches by example.I once assigned a group of student interns to supervision duties without consulting their cooperating teachers. When two of these teachers advised me that I had interfered with their own plans for working with these future teachers, I was stunned. It took a few minutes to get past my strong urge to defend my actions as important and within my authority. I canceled the assignments and apologized to each cooperating teacher privately. We worked out other arrangements for the supervision.
- Wait patiently, expectantly, and intensely for your work to have an effect, for your students to succeed, for your reputation to grow, for your skills to sharpen, and for your alumni to choose to visit you and to let you know how you did.I became a high school English teacher by necessity at a time when a liberal arts graduate could be hired in the absence of certified candidates. I tried to leave the profession repeatedly in my first three years. Then a strange thing happened. Alumni came back to see me. They taught me that the joy in teaching is often a matter of waiting. It's like planting and nurturing a seed you hope will grow into something full and mature and useful. Everything teachers do is related to planting, pruning, nurturing, and strengthening. But we become impatient. We think we have failed with some. We forget that each individual is unique. In the rush to meet standards and to perform well, it is sometimes furthest from our thoughts to wait with confidence, remembering that it is the nature of the seed to grow.
I have listed each expectation beginning with a verb. The first letters of each, when combined in reverse order, create an acrostic which describes how I think of teaching. It is "War and Peace," an epic undertaking full of battles, losses, and victories punctuated with periods of alternating despair and euphoria. It is not for the timid, the faint of heart, the aloof, the distant, or the uncommitted. It is down and dirty, five live shows a day. There is no more honorable or ennobling way to make a living. I recommend it highly.
