Greatness is in demand these days. World Series contenders are looking for great pitching. Starters. Short relievers. Mid-relievers. Closers. You don’t have to throw more than a couple of innings, maybe 20 pitches at most, but if you have “great stuff”, major league baseball general managers want your phone number. Wide-bottomed offensive linemen, tall and mean defensive ends, and wide receivers with 40 inches of vertical lift command attention in the NFL. Children idolize those that play with skill and abandon. These are game changers. Their presence on the field tilts the outcome in favor of their teams.
I read Mary Amato’s article entitled “What Are We Doing to Support Great Teachers?” in the October 8th issue of Education Week. I appreciated Ms. Amato’s recognition of teachers she has observed over many years whose passion and command of the classroom consistently incite their students to engage in daily instruction. In contrast, she acknowledges that other teachers appear to be barren of the capacity to exude any contagious excitement and simply occupy their classrooms. She wonders what we can do to support these great, impassioned teachers and believes that burdening “great” teachers with professional development in the Common Core State Standards is a waste of their time and talent. “A set of official common-core standards isn’t necessary to achieve a high-quality education; great teachers are,” she writes.
I read on wanting to learn how Ms. Amato developed the picture of these teachers as “game changers” of great talent. She did not satisfy my inquiry. Many stars of stage, screen and television, many enlightened and inspired parents and grandparents, and a lesser number of people informed by the exampling of their great teachers may fill Ms. Amato’s billing for what is great in the classroom. But, none of these are game changers.
As much as passion and energy and interpersonal relationship engage children in learning, I offer that passion alone does not change the game of causing children to achieve a world class education or even a grade level education. There are too many children without either to simplify great teaching to characteristics of the teacher. Once excited and engaged, the question is “to what end will the children’s passionate instruction take them?” It is the light of the candle not the lighting of the candle that is of interest. Hence, what do game changing teachers do that makes them really great?
Add two qualifications to the characteristic of passion and teachers can become game changers: adeptness with a curriculum of knowledge, skills and dispositions that will prepare a child for a lifetime of learning and the capacity to find a way through their future world, and, pedagogical skills that can cause every child, regardless of distractors, to become a successful achiever of that curriculum. Now we have a more complete description of a teacher with the disposition, knowledge, and skills to approach greatness.
So, imagine the teacher of eight year olds who can cause children, those without a single book in their home and those without a home as well as those with a dyslexia or neuroses that stands as a barrier to most instruction to read at or greater than a grade level and understand and resolve complex arithmetic problems.
Imagine the teacher who excites a child to learn and then gives that child a lesson that causes all other children to learn but this child. Less than great teachers might truck on to the next lesson and take pleasure in the high percentage of initial learners. A great teacher circles the student with alternative and adaptive instruction again and again using all the teacher’s pedagogical skills until this student, the last student to learn, has done so.
Imagine the teacher who lifts most the efficient learners past promotional or graduation requirements and causes these students to surpass the required benchmarks. And, who mentors gifted children through personalized and personally crafted experiences and causes these children to live up to the potential of their talents.
Excitement in the classroom is wonderful, but analytical and prescriptive instruction that incrementally builds student learning concept and skill and understanding upon concept and skill and understanding until great learning challenges are overcome and all children are successful learners – that is the description of a great teacher who is a game changer.