Six months ago, we blogged about the importance of great educators. It's a topic we celebrate regularly, particularly in Educators That Rock, a series of profiles of educators that inspire us. The occasion then was an article we had written about how difficult it can be for students from rural communities to apply to top colleges. We spoke with Angela Bakker-Lee, who had ventured from a rural town to Stanford University, a Marshall Scholarship and a career as a healthcare consultant. Angela credited several of her teachers, particularly Linda Lee Tatro, for helping Angela recognize and realize her potential:
"I have no doubt that knowing her changed my life. She encouraged me in a way that no other teacher had up to that point. She had more confidence in me than I did. And I think she was the first adult to really talk to me."
This week, teachers came under attack from talk show hosts and many others who have spent little time in classrooms. They made broad statements about fixing "the" education system, as though it were a monolith with a fixed set of problems, rather than an amalgamation of individual districts spread across our federation of 50 states, each with its own particular problems to address - sometimes teachers, sometimes administrators or severe budget cuts or external phenomena, sometimes parents and students themselves.
Happily, I've also come across several more affirmations of the importance of great educators, and the impact they can have on students.
The greatest wisdom often comes out of the mouth of babes, as I learned, again, when I came across this two-year old video featuring Dalton Sherman, then a fifth grader. Addressing 20,000 educators in Dallas, he told them, using a rhetorical style as convincing as you'll ever hear: "here’s the deal: I can do anything, be anything, create anything, dream anything, become anything -- because you believe in me, and it rubs off on me....In some cases, you're all we've got."
The next reminder came from our Interview of the Day from yesterday, featuring Maya Angelou. As so often seems to be the case, her early life was not what you'd ordinarily expect to lead to awards and nominations from Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Pulitzer. At 7, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, which led her uncle to kill the rapist. Stunned by the episode, Angelou refused to speak for four years, and found solace only in poetry. In a 1987 interview with CBS Radio, Angelou explained how a teacher, Mrs. Flowers, conquered a 12 year-old trauma victim's refusal to speak:
"She said, 'you can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”
The final reminder this week came from a blog post written from the heart of Sarah Edson, a teacher at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Conn. I met Sarah this summer at #ntcamp in Philadelphia, an educator managed "un-conference," a growing phenomenon in which teachers create their own professional development, on their own time, with their own money.
Anyone who has been to an un-conference would not broadly proclaim that teachers are the problem with "the" education system. #ntcamp was the starkest evidence I've seen yet of the profound commitment of many teachers to creating new, and relevant, approaches to education. Originally envisioned as a small program where experienced teachers would share tips with new teachers, #ntcamp was attended by more than 100 veteran educators who assembled at Boys' Latin Charter School at 8 a.m. on a 102-degree Saturday.
Many were from the greater Philly area, New Jersey and New York; plus dozens of out-of-towners such as retiree Jerry Blumengarten, up from Florida; Pam Moran and Paula White from Albemarle County, Virgina; Steve Anderson from Winston-Salem, NC; Kyle Pace from Lee's Summit, Missouri; Shannon Miller from Van Meter, Iowa; and Elizabeth and Kristina Peterson, sisters-in-law who drove 7 hours from New Hampshire, overnight, after attending a wedding till 11 p.m. the night before, and arriving in Philly at 6:30 a.m. It was an amazing day of learning from an inspiring group of educators.
Sarah Edson was one of the few relatively new teachers there, and evidently she also was quite inspired by it, as well as by lessons learned from her educator mother, who passed away a decade ago. Sarah poignantly relays the experience of tending to her terminally ill mother for weeks, and the powerful lessons it taught her about paying close attention to a person's needs. She concludes by vowing:
"I will continue to attempt to connect with each of my students, even in the face of unresponsiveness. I will maintain hope. I will celebrate each success. And I will pay careful attention just in case I discover that a student, in her own way, has shown that she needs me."
It's here that I am supposed to conclude the post with a particular insight of my own. Instead, I invite you to re-read the words of Angela, Dalton, Maya and Sarah about the importance of great educators:
"I have no doubt that knowing her changed my life. She encouraged me in a way that no other teacher had up to that point. She had more confidence in me than I did. And I think she was the first adult to really talk to me."
"Here’s the deal: I can do anything, be anything, create anything, dream anything, become anything -- because you believe in me, and it rubs off on me....In some cases, you're all we've got."
"She said, 'you can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”
"I will continue to attempt to connect with each of my students, even in the face of unresponsiveness. I will maintain hope. I will celebrate each success. And I will pay careful attention just in case I discover that a student, in her own way, has shown that she needs me."
Mark E. Moran
Founder & CEO
On the importance of great educators, how and what they inspire -sometimes at national level, the following is a good example of: http://www.orhanseyfiari.com/ariteachertributes.html
Posted by: eoauk | January 25, 2011 at 09:24 AM