My Philosophy of Teaching

I began work as a teacher in 1990.  My first job in the classroom, I taught in New York City.  I believed then, as I do now, that all education is in fact, special education, because all teaching at its core, is not about assessment or data or test scores or economic outcomes, but about reaching the heart of a student, and enkindling in the heart, a curiosity about something in the world.

It doesn't matter the subject, so it isn't about STEM or the arts or any other collection of disciplines one might decide to be the most important at the moment. Teaching is about connecting with the students, and that's measured one student at a time, despite attempts by school systems, governments, and those who profit from assessments of all kinds, to assert otherwise.  The goal of teaching is to reach beyond the test.  We don't remember the teachers who taught to the test, we remember the teachers who helped us love/understand/and in some cases, survive/endure  the subject beyond the test.

A school can have the finest technology, and indeed, many have access to more information than ever before, but it is the teacher that reveals to the students, how to use that data, how to rearrange it, make it their own, and compose new knowledge. A teacher is not a sage on a stage, but a teacher is also not a checker of boxes, to make sure each student can check off each of the boxes.  A teacher is someone who conveys not merely knowledge, though that's certainly part of it, but a desire for knowledge.  The goal of teaching, in any subject, is to inspire desire to know more, by experiment, by creativity, by collaborative work, by humor, by projects, by papers, by film, by experts, by pouring out into the classroom and all of the planning, every gift a teacher has to reveal the more of a subject, beyond what is assessed. 

Twenty-three years, I'd been away from teaching, and upon returning, even at a lessened capacity, in the three years I've worked, I know this truth still holds, because it was always truth.  What unlocked Helen Keller from the darkness wasn't data, but relationship.  What gets a student from not reading, to discovering a world of stories at her fingertips, is when she puts down the phone, and picks up a book because the teacher's given her reason to trust her, that this voice she's about to discover, is one that she should know. 

I don't have the lingo of the modern educator, because I often find modern language seeks to cloak information, to hide what it does not like, and the first rule of being educated, is to seek truth. Just so,  the first rule of being an educator, is to profess truth with everything you've got.  Knowledge must be true, or else it is simply fancy, folly and fashion, --popular opinion or trending at best.  Science cannot be science if the laws of science are not constant, as understood by those who study such things.  Likewise, math cannot be math, if the formulas change not because they've been disproven, but because someone decides they're unpleasant.   So also, even in the softer fields like literature, good stories reveal something of the human condition, touch something of the heart and the mind with truth. As seekers of knowledge, whatever the discipline, we are all grasping at what we know of reality, and testing as it were, whether what we know, is universal, and with that understanding, conveying it in a unique way as illustrates our own singular gifts for communication and creating connections.

I tell students whenever we're talking about the purpose of a story, a good story is never just what happened, but why it happened, because a good writer isn't interested in merely entertaining, but in revealing something they consider to be vital and eternal.  The extent to which the story strikes a cord in the heart of the reader, reveals both the quality of the writer and the sensitivity of the reader to the message beneath the plot.  Good stories, great stories, resonate and echo across time. 

If you're wondering, why I've written this little piece, it's because I needed to sort out of my head, what my philosophy of teaching is and what it is not.  I'd been asked, if I had to choose, would I be a Special Educator or an English Teacher, and to me, it's a both and...because again, all education in my heart, is special education, and even in exclusively special education, I'm going to be teaching through stories, and thus revealing hopefully, something lovely that resonates...and that's the English.

Thus we come to the crux of the matter.  What defines me are my loves, and they're always more than I can count.  I don't have a favorite child. I love them all.  I have many, but that doesn't stop me from fiercely loving each of them with my all.  The same reality exists within my heart when it comes to careers.  I love writing, and I love getting works published.  I love creating new works, and hope to continue to do so for a long time to come. Likewise, I love working with students, hoping to help them learn to love stories, and love writing, and love uncovering the truths whatever writer we're reading, laid in there, knowingly or otherwise, for us to discover.  I love figuring out how students learn, and figuring out tricks to help students learn better, and discerning what we need to do to help a particular student thrive.   I love it all.