One piece of wisdom emerging from our ongoing discussions about education is that teachers matter most. They matter more than any other single factor in determining the quality of an education. Studies show it, and students realize it.

But what makes great teachers great? I was wondering that myself a few years ago, and I decided to take a direct, old-fashioned approach. I would set out to find some of the greatest teachers in America and talk to them about teaching.

I scoured America and found some inspiringly great teachers in the public and private schools, in universities, but also on the athletic field, in the culinary school, in the ballet studio, at the speedway, and in the operating room. They taught circus arts, horseshoeing, brain surgery, and even alligator wrestling.

And while their styles of teaching varied greatly, I found five qualities they have in common.

1. Passion
   They are so passionate about teaching that it is more a calling than a job. Minnesota first-grade teacher Lynette Wayne says simply, “Teaching chose me.” When the retired teachers I spoke with kept falling back into present tense, I felt that it was because the found teaching inseparable from their very identities.
2. Care
   Great teachers care. For them, care is more than a feeling; it is a lived commitment to do whatever it takes to bring to students knowledge, skills, and wisdom. Teachers want with all their hearts for their students to succeed. Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington teaches his players by the saying, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
3. Sensitive
   The great teachers are sensitive to their students. They have a keen intuition for what they are thinking, how they are feeling, what will move them forward. But sensitivity does not mean soft. These teachers are taskmasters, and at the Actor’s Studio West, Martin Landau coaches his students to confront their most difficult areas. Farriery instructor Doug Butler has them make one hundred horseshoes to get one right.
4. Communicators
   Great teachers are natural communicators. They seem to have a gift—carefully honed through experience—of transmitting what they understand to another human being. Whether through asking the right questions, giving clear explanations, assigning the right activities, or using magically effective metaphors, these teachers know how to transmit their own expertise to the students.
5. Experts
   And they are experts. Their teaching greatness is more an outgrowth of their expertise in their subject area than a separate skill, as if the highest level of understanding math, physics, or ballet dancing is to understand how to teach it. Vince Dunn fought fires in New York City for decades before he developed a new level of awareness and began to study fires, then to write about them, and ultimately to teach others how to fight them.

The great teachers have these qualities in common, but not much else. They certainly do not share a method. Some lecture, some talk little. But they have passion, care, sensitivity, the ability to communicate, and high levels of expertise.

Great teachers will always be rare, and good ones will never be as plentiful as we wish. There are also things we can do to increase the numbers of the great and the good, such as pay them well, respect them, encourage them to teach in their own style, and empower them to make the educational decisions best left to them. And we can remember, when we have waded through the fads, the politicking and the buzzwords, that they are the key ingredient. Anyone who wants to see these inspiring interviews can read them in Conversations with Great Teachers by Bill Smoot, Indiana University Press.

This guest post is contributed by Maria Rainier, she writes on the topic of online education.

John Jacob Astor, multimillionaire businessman. John Jacob Astor was America’s first multimillionaire. He was also a high school dropout. Woody Allen once said “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” Woody Allen really was thrown out of NYU after just a single semester for poor grades.

If you’re an educator or thinking about becoming one there is no doubt that you have run into the disruptive, irritating, distracting, wisecracking and sometimes funny class clown. We all have either been sitting in class with one, have taught one or have been one.

When researching this article I was amazed at the number of famous and infamous people that are on the list of high school and college dropouts. We have all heard the stories; Sylvester Stallone knocking on a thousand agents doors with the Rocky Script under his arm and being rejected a thousand times, Bill Gates and Paul Allen dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft. Tony Robbins living in a 400 square foot apartment having to wash his dishes in the bath tub. The list goes on and on but what no one tells you about are the tens of millions of dropouts that have nothing and go nowhere, those that just suffer through life and those that cannot support themselves and their families.

I knew a class clown once. He was bright, funny and wasted all his skills, abilities and talents entertaining his class. This wasn’t a paid gig either. He did it for free. He did it just for fun. There are inspiring stories of dropouts all over if we look for them. But what we can’t find are the countless stories of those that go nowhere. Those that fill our prisons, exhaust our social services and live lives of poverty and despair.

I want you to understand this article is not pro, nor anti school. It is pro education. We all have different learning styles. Some of us will excel with traditional formal education and some will not. This is just a fact of life. What this writer wants to convey is that if we pay attention we can uncover our student’s strengths and then exploit them.

We are fortunate that in our society we have a multitude of educational options available. You ever hear that old story about the car accident at the corner where the Rolls Royce crashed into the Mercedes? The plumber broke his leg and the electrician broke his arm. That story is a prime example of education bringing about wealth and success. Was it traditional college? Nope, but it paid off, perhaps because those gentleman were made to excel in plumbing and electric.

If you are an educator or thinking about becoming one it is important that you become expert at recognizing your students learning styles. Maybe your class clown will not be the next Bill Gates; maybe he will just be the next Thomas Edison.

A friend recently mailed me a copy of the book The Line and the Dot: Alternative thoughts on vision by Paul Gibbs. The book intrigued me because there is very little information on the outside of the book and I trust my friend’s recommendation. So I began reading a little bit. Tonight I came across the following excerpt:

During my time as a school pupil, I had learned a valuable lesson. In the religious education I’d received, I had two different teachers. They both taught me about Christianity, but one turned me off of God, and one turned me on to God. The first taught the program. The second taught passion.

The head of PSE agreed and gave me opportunities to teach lessons. My first memory of ever being introduced in a school went like this:

“Students, as you know, we have been going through a series teaching the myths of the world, and last week we looked at the story of Noah’s Ark. Well this week, we have found someone who actually believes that happened. His name is Paul Gibbs. Let’s welcome him to class.”

In a fifty minute lesson, I spent half of it trying to explain the logistics of how Noah’s Ark might have happened and the other half answering questions. Questions such as, “Have you always believed this?” and “Do your parents believe this?” Questions which led to answers such as, “No, but let me tell you about my skin disease…”

It is not our beliefs that transfer. It is our passion.

I have only been to one ice hockey game. I went with my two sons and a Canadian friend to whom ice hockey was a second religion. Three times a fight broke out on the ice…During the first fight, my sons and I were totally unmoved. We had a quick discussion with my friend who thought that the fights were just part of the game. During the second fight, my friend got quite excited. He could not help but shout encouragement to his team. I noticed my boys watching him. GThe third time he was on his feet cheering. My boys didn’t stand, but they also cheered along.

Interesting, isn’t it?

During all three fights, his beliefs never changed. But when he showed passion, my sons got excited and joined in.

It is not our beliefs that transfer. It is our passion.

Those two quick anecdotes along with the repetition of the phrase, “It is not our beliefs that transfer…It is our passion” combined to bring to mind some similar thoughts that Angela Maiers is having over on her blog this month. Her Passion Driven Conversations are really inspiring. She allowed me to contribute a post there, and I’m really not all too thrilled with what I wrote, but I do appreciate her invitation to participate. The concept I was trying to get across is: Inspire your students by inspiring their teacher. Again, I don’t know how effectively that idea came across though.

I am convinced that passionate teachers are the ones who inspire students. If you are uninspired, you will see that reflected in the attitude that your students have. Your energy must feed their energy. If you don’t have energy, you are in for a very very long year.

If that’s you, you must FIND YOUR PASSION…immediately if not sooner.

I just listened to a recent podcast of Radiolab entitled Words. They included a bonus video along with the podcast. Powerful images and sounds here. The video is below. If you haven’t listened to Radiolab, now is a great time to start.

As I approach my ninth year of teaching, I have begun to wonder about the effectiveness of my classroom management plan.

A brief summary
When I first started out, I allowed way too much stuff to go on. In the middle of my second year, I cracked down like nobody’s business and began what I might term my “dictator days”. Basically, I was a bully and made sure I was in charge of my classroom. I still wholeheartedly believe there is a time and place for that exact thing. But I no longer feel so out of control that I need to fall back on that plan.

This year, I want to allow more liberty in my classroom. It will be a struggle for me at times, as it means that things are going to be slightly more chaotic at times. But it will result in making the students feel safer, which any educator or psychologist will tell you is a huge thing if we want people to thrive in a situation.

I’ll write more about this in the coming months and see how things play out with it and all. But my challenge for you is to be more mindful of the words that you say (as well as those left unsaid). Now watch the video.

Emails like this are the reason this site exists.

I am an 11-year high school English teaching veteran in the Los Angeles area. Most of my teaching was done in the trenches of suburban, low-SES “nay-bah-HOODS” and the fringes of, um, gangsta lands. (I teach English … go figure.) I’ve had my share of awesome kids, classes and experiences, and I’ve had my share of kids who practice “learned helplessness” and come to school looking like Snoop Droopy Drawers. Overall, I love my subject matter, and love working with high school age kids, especially helping them to “read, write and think your world” (one of my class mottoes).

I wanted to thank you for your no-nonsense, honest site that both cuts to the chase about teaching and encourages (us) to stay the course. I remember stumbling upon your site awhile back during a particularly long, rough period of teaching – you know, that no matter what techniques or strategies you try, or how many parent phone calls or detention slips you do, the kids choose to be vicious to the last day. Your tips and insight, especially the reasons to quit teaching and the reasons to stay in education, gave me the perspective I needed to get right back to work and be with my kids. I was also thrilled to read about how you were able to gain classroom control and your band kids’ respect right after Spring Break. Way to go!

What really impressed me as I reviewed your site this evening is that you are a Christian, too. Praise God! The kids need to have excellent teachers who are also strong spiritual influences – and how cool that you get to use music as that bridge. Are your students too young to appreciate musicians such as Ashley Cleveland, one of the best Christian musicians around? (I wonder what the music would sound like if she, Keith Green and Larry Norman could jam together?)

[snip]

Thanks again for your great site. Thanks for making music matter to students. And thanks for staying the teaching course, and sharing your great example with the rest of the online teacher brigade. May your last days of the school year be as stress free as possible! I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Not all of the emails are friendly
I occasionally get emails or comments that are negative. Telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about or blaming administrators for the problems in education or whatever. My basic response to the trolls/obnoxious jerks/dirtbags/haters/whatever is to not respond.

I’ve learned that you will never make everyone happy until you stop doing things. But then, what’s the point?

The two articles that seem to strike the sorest nerve with readers are three of the earliest ones I wrote, back when I was trying to ruffle feathers a little bit to get noticed. They are 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick), Valid Reasons Teachers Quit, and Invalid Reasons Teachers Quit.

The latter two seem to incite the most�incendiary�responses, and so next week we will revist these articles three years later.

Oh yeah, in case you want to know what I removed from the email above, she asked for suggestions on possibly moving from California to teach in Texas. If you want to help her out some there too, I’m sure it would be appreciated!

If I may, I would like to get your perspective on the current teaching climate in Texas. I’ve been seriously considering moving out of state in order to stay in the teaching profession. The last couple of years in CA have been particularly cruel on English teachers (as well as nationwide). Fair to say that burnout has set in, especially with what administrators and state “school experts” are doing in the districts, but the desire to remain in the classroom and be a positive influence on teenagers has not gone away. Maybe it’s time for a change of location. I’ve been reviewing TX ISD sites throughout the state to get a feel for the schools and their expectations. Are there particular issues that TX is facing with budget cuts that are forcing schools to take strong measures ( increase class sizes, make staff take unpaid furlough days)? Also, what would be the most effective way to approach school districts about openings, especially someone from out of state who’s had to eat, breathe, sleep and pray teaching standards that rival Texas’? Since all of my experience is from metropolitan/suburban areas, I would probably focus my search to major cities. But I’m open to looking at other options as well. If I did make the bold move, my top priority would be to make sure here’s a biblically strong church nearby.

Please know that I’m not trying to brownnose for teaching positions. But I am looking at options. Any advice or insight that you are open to passing on down is greatly appreciated. If you have questions about who I am, want to know more about my teaching, etc., I am happy to answer.

I ran 1 mile last night and it took me 18:45. I saw a post on the Couch To 5K’s Facebook profile the other day that questioned whether someone made a typo when they said they ran a mile in 33 minutes.

They couldn’t imagine someone only running one mile in 33 minutes. My contribution to that discussion was pretty good, so I posted it on the Can Wii Do It? blog this evening.

Enjoy The Art of Slow Slow Slow Running…

Are you at the bottom of a pit? Maybe you’re in a place you never thought you would be. Or you never thought you’d be there again. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen into a bad habit in teaching. I allow myself to get bogged down with paperwork instead of taking care of it right away. Students ask me questions at the beginning of class and I forget the six magic words that liberate me: “I’m not answering questions right now.”

Oh, you’ve done it too…

Positive changes come and go like the wind most of the time. How do we stick it out and truly persevere? If you know the answer to this question, write a book and make millions. It seems everyone who thinks they might have a clue has already written a book about it. And the world continues setting goals and failing.

The only key I have found has been simply diligence. The Free Dictionary defines diligence thusly:

1. Earnest and persistent application to an undertaking; steady effort; assiduity.
2. Attentive care; heedfulness.

I prefer the simpler “discipline multiplied by time.” I think how to fail gracefully is one of the greatest lessons we can learn and more importantly as teachers, one of the greatest lessons we can transfer to our students.

Along these lines, Keith Green wrote:

He’s brought me here, where things are clear
And trials turn to gold
He shared with me, His victory
He won in days of old

Oh Lord, I don’t deserve
The riches of your word
But You’ve changed my filthy rags
To linen white as snow

The view from here is nothing near
To what it is for You
I tried to see Your plan for me
But I only acted like I knew

Oh Lord forgive the times
I tried to read your mind
Cause you said if I’d be still
Then I would hear your voice

My Lord, my King, my urge to sing
And praise the things above
No words can say the glorious way
You changed me with your love

He’s brought me low, so I could know
The way to reach the heights
To forsake my dreams, my self esteem
And give up all my rights

With each one that I lay down
A jewel’s placed in my crown
Cause His love, the things above
Is all we’ll ever need

He’s brought me here, where things are clear
And trials turn to gold

The thing that got me thinking along these lines was actually that I downloaded a recent TED Talk by Aimee Mullins entitled The opportunity of adversity. In it she says, “unless told otherwise…if left to their own devices, a child will achieve.”

How powerful is that? How often do we take a child’s diagnosis and assume that means they are going to act or think a certain way? How often do we — consciously or unconsciously — reinforce those stereotypes? I’m sure I’m the only one who might possibly remotely come close to doing anything like that…or not! She concludes the talk:

“I think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit. A spirit that’s been crushed doesn’t have hope, it doesn’t see beauty, it no longer has our natural childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine. If instead, we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope, to see beauty in themselves and others, to be curious and�imaginative, then we are truly using our power well. When a spirit has those qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being.”

Here’s the entire video:

Oh yeah, did I mention she had both of her legs amputated when she was one-year old?

While we’re on the topic of TED Talks about adversity, you’ve got to watch this video of deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie explaining how to listen. Amazing stuff!

Embrace the trial. Learn from the experience. Go for the gold!

Look around you. How many unrealized plans do you see? How much unfinished business do you have sitting on your desk at work waiting for you in the morning? What about ungraded papers, unread emails, un-thrown-away junk mail?

Maybe paperwork isn’t your problem. Maybe it’s a half-finished basement, a bathroom renovation gone sour, a fence in the back yard that needs to be adjusted. Or you have bill collectors hounding you. Or you aren’t contributing enough (or anything) to your retirement plan. Or you are in debt out your eyeballs. Or you’re still lugging around that extra 5 pounds that you’ve been meaning to lose (or the 75 pounds that has grown as you’ve been ignoring it for the last decade).

Whatever the case, we all have unfinished business in our lives. These things can cause incredible amounts of stress when we think about them. They can cause even more when we ignore them for a while hoping they’ll go away. But they rarely do.

Here’s the secret
You won’t change a thing in your life until you finally decide that you’re disgusted with living the way you have been living.

Most plans go unfinished simply because they are good ideas, perhaps even great ideas, but they aren’t all-encompassing ideas. By that I mean, we don’t develop the intense focus needed to accomplish them.

This goes back to the concept of planned neglect that I mentioned a few weeks ago. If we really want to change something, we’re going to have to give it solitary focus for an extended period of time. This is the psychology behind Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover plan (watch the videos for more info).

Having said this, there are a couple of things that we can do to help lower the stress in our lives.

1. Find a source of stress and beat it into submission
   Figure out one thing that brings most stress in your life. If it’s a relationship, work on addressing the problems that are going there. If it’s financial, focus all of your effort onto one financial goal at a time. If it’s a project, just decide to make it happen immediately. Spend a month or two developing one habit that will get you moving into the right direction. As you focus on one thing, other problems will become evident and your passion and focus will help you to overcome those in the process. But don’t get sidetracked! Stay on target.
2. Resolve to ignore the problem
   This is the other choice. If it’s not something illegal, immoral, or unhealthy, just accept it. If it’s something you want to eventually get through, then put some steps into place to gradually get over it, but sometimes there is beauty in just flat out accepting your own imperfections and moving on. It may be something you accept now but in a year or two or six you’ll be at a point where addressing the problem is easier and more reasonable.

I have a few unfinished series of articles on this blog that I started but for one reason or another I gave up on. This year, I will go back and finish some of them. If I don’t finish them all, I’ll live. So will you. If I do finish them, great! For now, I’m simply not going to worry about them.

For me, my focus point right now is exercise (specifically, training to run a 5K). Do you have one yet? If not, what are you waiting for? Tweet or blog about it and let people know.

Since I have decided this new year to slowly end my hatred of running that I have harbored for the past decade or so, I’m reading more about it. I am inspired to find there are a handful of pretty good health and fitness blogs that my school hasn’t blocked on the network yet too! My conference period can now be spent walking, reading, or actually doing productive things for my band!

Today I have been catching up on some of the Twitter links I’ve seen and came across 13 Most Inspirational YouTube Videos of All-Time that Angela Maiers had sent out a few days back. I was really impressed by this video.

I was so impressed that I decided to dig in and see what more I could find from him. I came across an interview he did following the release of I Am Legend (Will Smith Walks Alone in I Am Legend). Below are three excerpts from the interview:

Smith on the discipline of losing twenty pounds for the role
“For me, the important part of that, and what we determined from our research, is that eating becomes something you do because you have to. There is no pleasure, there is no desire to eat, you just know your brain won�t function if you don�t. So losing weight and then the working out being part of the regimen you have to do – but for me I have a much easier time losing weight than putting weight on.�Ali was fifty times harder trying to put weight on than to drop. If you run thirty miles a week and do five miles six days a week, your body will look like whatever you want it to look like.”

Will Smith on whether he has a positive attitude towards life
“Yes, absolutely. I feel very, very confident that the keys to life for me are reading and running. The idea that there are millions and billions of people who have lived before us, and they had problems and they solved them and they wrote it in a book somewhere – there is no new problem that we can have that we have to figure out by ourselves. There�s no relationship issue, there is no issue with your parents or your brother or your government, there is no issue we can have that somebody didn�t already write a thousand years ago in a book. So, for me, that concept of reading is bittersweet because you know it�s in a book somewhere but you�ve got to find the right one that is going to give you the proper information. I said reading and running and the running aspect is how can you connect with your weakness. When you get on the treadmill you deprive yourself of oxygen. What kind of person you are will come out very, very quickly. You�re either the type of person who will say you�re going to run three miles or you stop the treadmill at 2.94 and you hit it and you call 2.94 3 miles, or you get off after a mile, or you�re the type of person that runs hard through the finish line and when you get to 3.0 you realize, �God, I could really do 5,� and you go ahead and do two more. And that little person talks to you and says, ‘Man, do you feel our knee? We should stop. I feel we should stop ourselves right now. This is not healthy anymore.� When you learn to get command over that person on that treadmill, you learn to get command over that person in your life. That�s the same person that tells you, ‘Man, that girl�s got some big breasts. Listen, we don�t have to do nothing, let�s just go the hotel room together.’ That�s the same person. Getting command of that person has been really important.”

On where his confidence originates from
“There is a very central idea in my life. My grandmother just thought I was the greatest. She always had us always playing piano and having us do recitations at church and all of that. She always kept us in the shows at church and there was a look of pride that my grandmother have in her eyes that became the fuel that I need in life. I need my woman and daughter and mother and women in general to look at me with that look that my grandmother had. I was about 15 years old when my first girlfriend cheated on me. It so destroyed my concept of cause and effect, that you can be good and good stuff happens, and when you�re bad, bad stuff happens. I processed why she cheated on me was I wasn�t good enough, and I made a decision in my bed that I would never not be good enough again. That was the last time in my life that I would not be good enough. In that bizarre hurt 15-year-old mind then nobody would hurt me or cheat on me if I�m good enough. I may have gone a little overboard on it but every single day Jada has to have that look. I can�t function if she doesn�t have that look in her eyes. That means with the movies, as a husband, as a father, everything I do in life I educate myself to the place that I can contend with the best on Earth and that�s the only way to keep my woman from leaving me.”

Be inspired, stick with your goals, and don’t end 2010 the same way you started it!

In the past I’ve come up with New Year’s Resolutions, and more recently Visions for the Year. They sort of helped to guide the first four to six weeks of the year, but rarely have lasted much beyond that. This year is different. This year I’m for real. I’ve decided to create a BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal – for myself. I am making active steps in moving forward on the goal, and I am setting myself up to either win big or fail big. It will not be a quiet ending, whichever way things pan out.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first thing I’ll do is go over the basics of goal-setting, and then give an example of my current BHAG.

Specific
Most goals tend to come in an open-ended form such as “I want to lose weight” but don’t include any specifics about the goal. What can you do with “I will exercise more and eat less” if you don’t have specific data with which to compare? If I say that I’m going to eat less, I need to know what eating less looks like. Maybe I’ll lower my monthly food budget, or make it a goal to leave food on the plate every time I eat.

Realistic
I may realize that I need to lose over 100 pounds for the Wii Fit guy to say that I’m healthy, but if I set a goal of losing 100 pounds this year, that’s fairly unrealistic. Oh sure it can be done, but it’s atypical, and the chance of me maintaining a weight-loss rate of 8 1/3 pounds a month for an entire year is pretty minimal. Especially given my past track record. But 60 pounds is a bit more reasonable. 5 pounds a month on average means that I can have a wild month where I lose 9 and another in which I lose 1 and still be on track.

Measurable
An effective goal must be measurable. If I set a goal to eat 50 Twinkies, but don’t set a target time for such eating to be done, then there is no clear motivation to get the goal started and finished. If I say I’m going to eat 50 Twinkies in 20 minutes, then I can sit down and figure out that I’ll have to consume 2.5 Twinkies every minute, or one every 24 seconds. This gives me a target rate for accomplishing the goal, and allows me to adjust within the time-frame to figure out if I need to speed up or even if I can slow down the pace a little bit.

Public
A goal that isn’t codified in writing is merely wishful thinking. Write it down. Blog about it. Tell your friends, family, enemies, students, pets, pastor, rabbi, hairstylist, pizza delivery boy, grandmother, whoever you can about it. Tweet about it. Facebook links relating to it. Go public and go big.

How my goal follows this pattern
So this Sunday, the sermon in church was based on Philippians 3:13,14:

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

So after some deep meditation, I decided that it’s time for me to return to my early college healthy lifestyle. So I have two specific goals that I have set for myself:

1. Run a 5K (3.1 miles) in April
2. Weigh under 200 pounds by 2011

These goals are specific, reasonable (albeit clearly they will take intense effort and focus), measurable, and public. I’m telling my running friends about my 5K plans. I’m blogging about it here, as well as on another blog. I’m posting Twitter and Facebook status updates about my workouts and goals.

What about you? What are your goals for the new year?