Teacher in Development

J.M.’s recent post on teachers as investors still has me pondering some more about our roles today.

“People aren’t interested in how much you know until they know how much you are interested in them.” - John C. Maxwell.

That quote comes from a book I’m reading called “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader” by John Maxwell.

Teachers are, or should be, investors.
Investors in their own learning:
Great teachers are always learning. We should never stop. We should never allow ourselves to think that we’ve reached some pinnacle of intellect where we no longer need to reach for more. We must challenge ourselves to be challenging to someone else.

We must never allow ourselves to coast. To slip into neutral, no matter how heavy our workload may be. We must remember that our market - our students - and teaching theory and methods - are smarter and faster than we are. They never coast. If we fail to invest in development and learning, we’ll quickly find ourselves stagnating and left far behind in today’s world.

A prime example of the student being smarter and faster than our old ways of doing things: Is this cheating or smart information sharing? Digital fluency: Are we aware? Are we thinking ahead, looking for ways to use this? Our market is. Has, and are. A teacher stuck in neutral will miss this, and his or her students will suffer greatly.

Teachers should be investing in passion.

“The word ‘charisma’ comes to mind, as I recall many of my teachers invested passion in the subjects they taught; they were there because they loved the subject and they loved learning (although at least one prof comes to mind as coming across as socially inept, yet he had such a drive to learn and to challenge students and was open to being challenged (as long as the challenge was given in an informed way).” - J.M.

While this is true for every subject you teach, I want to funnel this over to ESL for a moment. Are you excited about helping your students to speak and understand English? Are you passionate about lexical development and engaging conversations? Do you get pumped when a struggling student finally puts together a sentence that everyone can understand?

Grammar and memorizing those rules and vocabulary lists. Reading irrelevant content. Doing the same type of exercises over and over again. Starting a new group, but using the material you’ve always used - welcome to a direct flight into stagnation.

If you’re bored, you can bet your students are too! Invest in passion. Get excited about what you are teaching. If you’re not anymore, try to become an out-of-the-box thinker. (Invest in your development again.)

Invest in love.
I go back to Maxwell’s quote. I go back to small groups (even if you have a huge class.) Know your students. Take the time to go personal. I don’t mean that you blur the line between teacher and student. They still have to know who you are, and what that implies. But we do have to get past their student number, seating asignment, and last name.

We have to navigate into the range of influence. That happens up close. That happens when we know their hobbies and passions. That happens when we start to care about their success, and nudge them towards it.

“I must also add at this point that many of the high school teachers who stand out in my mind were ones who believed in me. They heard what I was interested in, and they encouraged me to grow in that.” — J.M.

I echo J.M.’s experiences. The teachers who have impacted me the most, and I can count them on one hand, were the ones who took the time to get interested in me. Who genuinely cared. Who discussed my ideas with me, and encouraged other directions.

No matter what subject area you teach, you need to be an expert or a developing investor. An investor in your own learning, but in a way that seeps into public. (You can tell when someone is a passionate learner.) We should be passionate about what we do, cus if not - everyone can tell. And to me, we must most of all, become passionate investors in our students. Scale down those huge classes. Move in close. Get to know, and be known, and Bam: You’re in influence range. Why? Because you took the time to care.

Teachers are investors.