Teaching is for artists

 Teaching is for “artists”?

 

There is a great shortage of teachers.  That is not news.   School systems are looking everywhere for people who are willing to be teachers.  Some states are recruiting retired military folks. (Here’s looking at you Florida.) Will these ex-military people make good teachers?   Some very well might.  And the truth is that there are a certain number of traditionally trained individuals who do not make good teachers and in spite of the shortage should not be in a classroom.

Teaching is both an art and a science.   The science part of teaching can be taught to someone relatively easily.  There are specific ways to structure a lesson so that most of the children will achieve the objective.  There are a limited number of methodologies to teach reading and math so that learning those will be enough for most teachers.  Many of the new “research based methods” are simply variation on a theme and not really all that new.  Good teacher educators can teach the science of teaching and reasonably intelligent adults can learn that science.

That brings us to the art of teaching.  Some people might disagree but it is the art that cannot be taught.  The art of teaching is instinctive.  It’s knowing when to push a student to do more and when to stand back and know that what you are seeing is all you are going to get today.  It is knowing which parents are your allies and will join you in the highest expectations for their children and which parents will be the excuse makers and not your partners.   The artist teachers know which kids to kid with and which to be strictly serious. It’s an instinct.   It’s a way to connect with children on a very basic level- human being to human being.  It is laughing with a student who has just said something that might not be exactly appropriate for a student to say in school, but boy was that funny.  It is demonstrating your respect for the child and for his/her background that may well be different from yours.  It is respecting each other’s values even if they are not the same as yours.  It is earning a child’s respect for you rather than demanding that respect because of your position of authority.  

It is being an artist in the classroom.   You may not have all the latest and greatest methods down pat, but if you are the teacher who has the art of teaching, you are the one the kids will remember and tell their kids about.  Teaching is for artists, even if they are retired military