Every school wants ‘good’ teachers — but what does ‘good’ actually mean?
What is a “good” teacher? A teacher who raises student test scores? Who gets students interested in subjects they thought were boring? Who inspires students to be more thoughtful people? Here is a post on how to be a “good” teacher by Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina. This appeared on his blog, and I am republishing it with permission.
By Paul Thomas
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.“Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes
For a very long time in the United States, the conventional wisdom has been that good schools were the key to just about everything—each child’s future, the nation’s economic survival, etc. More recently, that fantasy has narrowed to good teachers as the the “most important thing [fill in the blank].” And as I have examined, moving legislatively from No Child Left Behind to its successor K-12 education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is unlikely to change that mantra, as delusional as it is.
So, if you began reading this in hopes of finding an analysis of, say, teacher evaluation methods, I gently recommend you may be better off reading a volume of “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” fantasies, or take a stab at Ursula K. Le Guin. Instead, this is a true story about one recent morning — and about every year leading up to that during my 30-plus-years teaching Every school wants ‘good’ teachers — but what does ‘good’ actually mean? - The Washington Post:
