I remember sitting in an Intro to Education class as a college sophomore almost two decades ago, when our teacher (a retired public school teacher turned adjunct professor) asked us to go around the room and talk about “the teacher that changed our lives.” This task seemed simple for the 15 other students, who had seemingly been waiting their entire lives to be asked that question. The task, however, put me at a disadvantage, not just because I was the only male student in the class, but because I was the only one without a heartwarming story.
When my turn came at the end of a barrage of truly moving and beautiful recollections, I simply said: “Well, most of my teachers sucked, so I figured I could do a better job.” In retrospect, I regret my answer—both because it unintentionally came off as flippant and arrogant, and because the statement just wasn’t true (something I would only understand later in life).
Just three years before, at the age of 16, I had arrived in the United States with three bags, two sleepless nights, and one word of English. A week later, I was misplaced in a regular high school English class, instead of an English-language-learning class. My new English teacher had us open a copy of Huckleberry Finn and read chapter one. I can now appreciate the delightful whimsy of Huck Finn’s regional dialect, but after reading the first page on that first day, I reasoned that if that’s what English looked and sounded like, I would never learn it. And I think scholars would agree that Huck Finn just ain’t proper English.
Today, I am a high school AP English Language and Composition teacher and a college professor of English composition. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I have the privilege of acknowledging the impact high school teachers had on my development.
My drama teacher, whose attempt at cross-curricular teaching led him to offer extra credit to those students who wrote vocabulary terms on index cards and practiced them in class, is probably the reason I was able to bolster my vocabulary.
The college adviser who lent me an SAT book to study in her room during lunch is the reason I learned about the SAT in the first place—and definitely a major contributing factor to my college acceptance.
And the AP teacher I observed for an assignment in that Intro to Education class made me see the possibility of teaching AP English in the future. Interestingly, years after I graduated, she and I even ended up teaching side by side.
These anecdotes underscore the transformative power of teaching and the unique impact teachers can have on students. By the end of that Intro to Education class, we had to craft a statement of philosophy—a fancy string of words that adorned our personal teaching philosophy.
I pledged as an educator to “think of myself as the perpetual kingmaker, never the king.
“Just as the kingmaker makes the ascension possible but doesn’t ascend,” I wrote, “an educator influences the outcome but celebrates quietly from the shadows. Educators kneel so that others may stand on their shoulders.”
Time has taught me more than I thought I knew in that introductory class all those years ago, but I see a truth in what I wrote. I now know that an educator must be a perpetual learner. To say it another way, to teach is to learn twice over. I may have learned to teach, but I teach that I may learn.
I like how my mentee phrased it during the first few weeks of her first year of teaching: “I don’t know that I’ll be a good teacher, but I’m a hell of a learner.” She’s right: The best teacher is the best learner.
Learning has become one of the defining characteristics of my professional and personal identity. I am mesmerized by the power that learning has to assemble meaning out of chaos and create sense out of nothing.
To feel the weight of a classroom, of the students’ collective education, of their future development and influence is an incredible feeling—a feeling filled with purpose. Those are the days I feel like the Greek mythological figure Atlas—as though I can carry the future of the world on my shoulders.
But teachers also have those days when they push an uncertain rock of belief up a mountain as they wonder, “does this really make a difference?” Those are my Sisyphean days. But even in those days, we still push the rock. We push the rock because we believe it matters, and that belief gives us courage.
So, what does it mean to be an educator these days?
My answer is a little less idealistic, but largely the answer is still the same as it was in my first teaching philosophy statement: The educator is the kingmaker. The educator is the perpetual learner. The educator should be the best student in the classroom. Those teachers are the best equipped to teach.
