Teachers' lives are interesting.

You know, I've been a teacher and I have been other things in my life too. I like teacher. Here is why.

Teaching is really very multi-dimensional. There is not any "one correct way" to do the job. Every teacher seems to have their own style and sometimes they become quite noted for it. Great teachers teach students how to learn in many different ways. The best teachers I know of take charge of a subject (or subjects) in education and figure out a way to make them relevant and meaningful to their students. Successful teachers can motivate people, and some of the ones that I really admire are the ones that can figure out a way to be memorable in some way. It might be something as small as the way they greet their class in the morning. It may be that they are memorable for using humor as a teaching aid.

My own personal favorite teachers were the ones who were caring. You could see it in their smile a lot of times. I remember an older teacher I once had whose eyes crinkled when she smiled. She just beamed, and it was infectious. Soon we were all smiling back at her, no matter how badly the day might have gone previously.

It might be an overused phrase, but I really do believe that teachers who are passionate about what they do are the ones that communicate the best with their students. If they are teaching art, then I feel that art should be their passion. If teaching math, then they need to be able to show students why math matters. With gusto! If a teacher is teaching English, then the written word should be their truest love - all of this passion is very easy to see on casual observation, and it is also easy to see when someone is teaching something that they do not love. There is nothing worse than passing on an ambivalence about a subject to a new generation.

Another wonderful thing about teaching is the potential for teamwork and collaboration. I have seen some very generous educators. These are people who are willing to share their best ideas freely, and to teach their peers all of their best "secrets". In education, the beneficiaries are always the new generation of kids, and it would not be fair to be stingy with great ideas. All the best teaching concepts are out on the table, and the people who gain the most from this sharing are ones who deserve to benefit. Our children.

My strong feeling is that effective teachers should be rewarded and that weak teaching should be remediated. Much the same as students who are successful earn external rewards (scholarships, recognition) and weaker students repeat coursework, there should be some effective way to identify those teachers who are not communicating well with their students. The stakes are too high when a student is not learning. Teaching people how to be effective communicators should be a much higher priority in the university. Everyone has their own style of communication of course, but students deserve to be learning.

Finally, good teaching is about caring about all students and developing their minds and talents. It's about spending lots of hours on every student. It's also about hours of planning projects, grading, designing or redesigning courses, and preparing materials to keep instruction moving forward. Sometimes it's about teaching ethics - and sometimes it's even about saving a life.

Kids have all kinds of needs. It is critical that we see them and serve them.