It's the Teachers. Always the Teachers.

The title references a motto from the '92 election (<em>It's the economy, stupid!</em>) and is not meant as a general pejorative to idiots everywhere.  Though, in a way, it does capture my overall conviction about building a new education system for America:  it's gotta be about the teachers.

Let me throw the glove down right now, right here--maybe even use it to slap a few faces--knowing that every major education study confirms it:  there is nothing more important for producing positive outcomes for students than the quality of the teacher in his or her classroom.  Period.  End point. 

We have a first principle.  Chisel it in stone: <blockquote>A great education system necessarily needs great teachers.</blockquote>

Now, let's get after it.  This diary will dance arm in arm with this question:   <strong>Who should become a teacher?</strong>

A great but unknown education author (yeah, me) once began his paean to the life of teaching this way:  <blockquote>We are all students, we are all teachers.</blockquote> 

Taken with Hillary's now apocryphal tome, <em>It Takes a Village</em>, we must first admit that, in fact, each of us is a teacher, potentially, actually and continuously.  And as important, each is a student, potentially, actually and continuously.

Experience demands a response from sentient beings and you can't "be" in the world without touching it, and, in turn, being touched by it.

It is a small point, but a profound one:  <strong>Teaching and learning are not fundamentally about hierarchy.</strong>  They are each a process, and doing them well means having a sensitivity to making that process whole, rich and meaningful for all involved.

Thus, teaching is not a kind of mysterious alchemy, nor disconnected from life, nor housed in some sanctified parlor away from the masses.  You do it.  I do it. We all do it.  (It's kind of like sex, including that no one really wants to talk about it!)

So, in point of fact, everyone does it (sic), and, anyone can do it (really sic). 

Yet, because modern society demands a level of specialization and organization, we have created a category and a profession known as "teaching", and endeavor to find the right people to bring kids along in a safe, healthy and efficacious manner.

Fair enough.  Who should occupy that role?

Let's pause here to think about this:  is there anything more precious, more intense, more caught up in a deeply complex nexus of strong feelings/emotions/fears than what happens to children--and especially to <em>our own</em> children?

No.  There isn't.

So, imagine now that you are going to give your child to someone, every day, and ask that someone to bring your kid(s) back in the afternoon, completely safe, satisfied, stimulated, enriched, connected to others and generally more able and competent than when you let go of their hand in the morning.

Seem like a lot?

It is.  Especially for a person who may have as many as 20 or 30 or 40 little someones in one room at the same time.

The enormity of the task of teaching is undeniable; the potential for very great or very terrible things to happen ever present. 

And, given the value of learning for our economy, democracy and society, the need for quality education is real, understandable even crucial. 

And, holding these great private and public fears/needs/expectations on their shoulders, at the very heart of the messy human process of learning, stands a teacher.  A single, solitary, sentient being.

Parker Palmer says this: 

<blockquote>[Teachers]stand at the crossroads where the private and the public meet.</blockquote>

By this he captures the essential paradox that is teaching:  it has tremendous salience and importance for maintaining and fortifying civil society, while at the same time, it rests completely on the shoulders of a lone and completely personal individual.

Whoever aspires to teach must embrace this fundamental paradox.  One, you are hugely important as an actor in the public sphere; but two, the one indispensable thing that allows you to do that successfully is your personal and private awareness/approach toward what you are doing.

I call that a teacher's personal sense of mission.

Why does it matter?

Because the crushing weight of public responsibility versus personal sensitivity can easily and completely break the will of a teacher who has no mission, a weak sense of what they want to accomplish or just a private need to disengage from the clamor of America's public.

And we need to acknowledge right now the staggering weakness of our current educational system:  fully 50% of new teachers leave the profession after just five years on the job.  Not to mention the costs of this weakness:  an estimated $2.2 billion in retraining---Every.  Single.  Year.