Great Teachers Focus on Education, Not Tests.
A few years ago I taught a class of fourth- and fifth-graders in order to give the teachers some time to plan together. It was the easiest and best teaching I ever did, and a great example of how a great teacher doesn’t do it themselves but rather creates the conditions for the students to do it.
Each week the students had to learn nine words. The teacher gave them the words on Monday. They looked them up, learned the definitions, and used them in sentences. They came to know these words—in some cases intimately—as they discussed their different meanings in class and the different roles they can play in a sentence, so that by Thursday, when I taught the class, they had each written a story using all nine words.
I presided, as they took turns standing in the center of the room—each one poised and proud—reading their