Gevas

While having a lazy morning conversation with our house mate about teaching, I recall the most crucial and rewarding advice given to me concerning the classroom. Years ago, in the chaos of my first year in the trenches, it was my father who warned me of sure failure. Though he had limited teaching experience, it was in that very limited time that he came to understand a core truism behind successful teaching. He said to me, between my tears and rants of frustration, that “in order to be a successful teacher, you must teach your students first, your subject matter second.” I share this with my house mate as we talk of his girlfriend’s aspirations of becoming a high school math teacher. And I recall the number of times I so badly wanted to share this advice with other teachers, teachers who were giving it there all but still falling short of creating classroom environments wherein students thrived.

To teach one’s students first seems to be the simplest of solutions yet it requires that teachers first see their students. It means that you watch them as they interact, that you listen to them as they speak, and that you begin to know the people they are fast becoming. This can be painstaking excavation for one must be patient and flexible. It means that you jettison lesson plans, that you create more scaffolding than you originally believed necessary, it means that you add material at the last minute. Ultimately, it means that you surrender your own ideals for the sake of placing your students at the center of curriculum development. This does not mean one lowers their standards, but merely re-centers their focus. For to teach is not to serve the self or the passion you might have for a particular subject matter, but to serve your students, for they are your clients.

The sad reality is that most teachers have not spoken to my father. They enter into the classroom under the illusion that what they have to teach trumps those whom they are teaching. They believe that they are worthy of trust and respect merely because of the position they hold. These teachers often operate under the assumption that they can scare or worse, bully students into better, more intelligent human beings. There is no invitation within their teaching, no desire to pull from within each student the knowledge held there awaiting discovery. Instead many teachers believe the fallacy that they bring the enlightenment of which they will pour into the waiting vessels that are their empty, misdirected students. This becomes the demise of the magical relationship between teacher and student. The only way to regain that magic is to allow your students to teach you how to teach them. When and if you let this to occur you become a successful teacher and your students become the essence of success in itself.

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