With classes past mid-term in the public schools as well as colleges and universities, I want to offer this tribute to teachers.  While I spent my career in the world of “higher” education, here is a special “hats off” to those teachers in elementary and secondary educational programs for the simple reason that I never believed I had the “chops” to do what you do!  And this tribute is in full recognition and support of the rightful concerns about inadequate teacher salaries and the legitimate protests regarding the underfunding of schools and of the educational enterprise in general.  In light of all that, I want to celebrate the honored and honorable work you do at every level of the world of education—what Ernest Boyer called “the sacred act of teaching.”

Although I am one who eventually went to “the dark side,” to administration, that’s not what drew me into this profession in the first place—at least half of my forty-five years as an educator was spent as a full-time teacher.  I hope, then, that you will think of this as an exercise in collective remembrance about “matters that matter.” And so I offer this first post, to be followed by two additional ones over the next couple of weeks.

On the Boundaries of “Accountability” and the “Magic of the Unexpected.”

There are certainly some reasonable things to say in the world of teaching and learning about such issues as academic rigor, curricular content and structure, pedagogical methods, and the like.  I have engaged in those discussions and I have strong feelings about them, but I deeply believe that the bottom line is this: if students are to have a genuine encounter with learning—and if education is not about that, then I don’t understand it at all—it will happen most often because there is an engagement, “a meeting,” with a teacher.

I know that there is a lot to distract you from that central focus and to allow your sense of calling to get a bit stale.  It’s awfully easy, in this world of accountability to state and federal requirements and to accreditation mandates, to get caught up in “performance anxiety.”  Assessment and institutional effectiveness have entered the permanent vocabulary of education. Everyone wants you to prove you are doing a good job by evaluating and documenting and quantifying, and they want to audit everything you produce.

It’s enough to make even an easy-going person cranky.

As Kenneth Ashworth put it in a wickedly insightful article, “by the time (we) devise all the tools dictated by others to carry out our responsibilities, (we) find there is no room in the toolbox for the instruments that used to make the job fun, such as creativity, flexibility, experimentation, and initiative.  No wonder some of (us) wilt like a carrot pulled up once too often to see if it is still growing.”

While it may be that some of this attention to accountability is an example of “good intentions run amok”—or at worst, an attempt to argue that “those who pay the fiddler should call the tune”—I want to acknowledge what I’m sure you know, in your best moments:

that it is right and reasonable for us to state our goals,

to indicate what we expect students to learn,

and to demonstrate our effectiveness in achieving them.

That, simply stated, is not some insidious conspiracy dreamed up by persons in various accreditation organizations who have nothing better to do than lay awake at night dreaming up various “traps” and busy work for you to do.  It is, in its best iterations, honest accountability for the planning, the preparation, the classroom energy you spend, the private time you give to your students, the assessments you administer—all in the service of your genuine care for what is learned!

But having said that and done that, a host of things are left unsaid, including the perennial issue of what is and is not “measurable” and balancing accountability for “anticipated results” with those exhilarating learning experiences that happen in “a magic moment.”

In Parker Palmer’s words, “Authentic teaching and learning require live encounters with the unexpected, an element of surprise, an evocation of that which we did not know would happen until it did happen.  If these elements are not present, we may be training or indoctrinating students, but we are not educating them.”

So while validated “results” are certainly not irrelevant, to make them the only measure of your work is a sure path to inanity or insanity, and risks allowing the vitality of what cannot be anticipated in the teaching and learning “moment” to be buried under the weight of demonstrated expectation.  Because the bottom line, beneath all the other stuff teachers must do, is the student’s encounter with learning.  That’s where the magic is and we lose sight of it at our peril!

We are all fully aware that not all learning happens in the classroom or in the presence of the teacher, but I am convinced that it happens most often when it is supported, illuminated, surrounded by an authentic encounter with a teacher–

when the student understands why the teacher values the subject,

when the student sees that the subject has transformed the teacher’s life,

when the student is invited to learn, not by holding the subject at arm’s length, but in a  relationship that is personal and calls for encounter and struggle and change,

when the abstract, the propositional, the factual suddenly takes on face and form.

That kind of learning, in any field at all, is the kind that grabs and transforms.  It’s the kind of learning that excites, rather than trying merely to satisfy, a thirst for knowing, that enlarges the capacity of the mind, rather than trying merely to stuff it with information, however useful.  That is liberating learning, and it is relevant to every subject in every educational setting, and to every teacher’s encounter with students.

I know it doesn’t happen every day with every student or teacher;

I know students are sometimes resistant;

I know teachers are sometimes resistant.

But it does happen and it is the magic that keeps you vital, that keeps you coming back;

it’s the forehand passing shot down the line that makes you forget the double faults;

it’s that eagle putt that lets me forget that I also won the prize for the ugliest tee shot in the tournament (I really did that!)

This is the heart of the matter, without which the whole enterprise is ashes.  Curricula come and go, but great teachers and eager students, like ripples in a pond, go on forever.  The encounter with learning embodied in the relationship between teacher and student is what underlies that which we are asked to assess—it is the hidden curriculum and without it, a curricular structure designed by God himself would be an empty shell and a bad bargain at any price.

Take the vital teacher-student relationship out of the equation, and one is left with exactly nothing.

And so I celebrate with profound gratitude what you do and I wish for you, as you continue to engage with students and work through the inevitable struggles that come your way, the ability to recall, to affirm, and to cherish your irreplaceable role in “the sacred act of teaching.”

(These observations are drawn, with revisions and additions, from a couple of my earlier papers/presentations on teaching and learning.)  Sources cited:

Ashworth, Kenneth H.  “Administration Is Not the Fun It Used to Be.”  Chronicle of Higher Education (April 24, 1991

Boyer, E. and A. Levine.  A  Quest for Common Learning.  Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981.

Palmer, Parker J. The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring.  San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990.