The Most Important Thing!

Quora Question: As a teacher, what is the most important thing you've learned about education from your experience in the classroom?

How important teachers are, how critical their role is and how underrated this career is.

I learned, as a teacher, that I could make a BIG positive impact on my student’s lives and their future. Much more than most teachers realize and much more than I realized going into this career.

I believe that ALL teachers can make a BIG positive impact on their student’s lives if they choose to.

When I was a new teacher I didn’t realize the impact I was making on my students. I was simply trying to do my best job helping them to find the joy in learning. I put a lot of time and energy into my lesson plans and into making my class fun and safe while also ensuring that my students were learning.

My first clue to my impact was when a student wrote me a note saying that I was his hero. I didn’t know what I had done to earn those kind words but over the years I began to realize that it was that I “noticed” him. I tried to connect with each student, every class (didn’t always succeed with this) as I was monitoring their work time. (For more detail on this see my book for teachers, “Wait, Don’t Quit.”)

Here are the critical things I learned:

1. Students can often feel like no-one “sees” them. I worked on ensuring that I “noticed/saw” my students. This means really listening to them, regarding them and trying to connect as often as possible.

2. I also realized that many students were worried about looking “stupid” in front of others. Consequently they would pull back and give up and even act out because that is a safer alternative.

   
   

I addressed both of the above issues by doing the following:

1. No matter how busy or full my class was I tried to connect as often as possible with each student every day. (even if the connection was brief)

2. I decided to study/interview my successful students and my struggling students and from that I decided to do the following:

   1. I realized that the students that were failing or doing poorly had no idea how their brains worked and so did not understand how to study or what their brains need in order to understand a new concept or skill.

   2. I started teaching all my students about the basic brain physiology that happens during the learning process. (neurotransmission, input-throughput-output, LTP). I used fun brain activities to introduce each topic. They LOVED learning this and the more they learned, the better they did on exams, the more they engaged in class and the more they wanted to learn! Yay! They understood that they were not stupid at all! They simply had not given their beautiful 3 lb. brains a chance to learn. I am SUCH a proponent of this now that I have started writing a 2nd book for teachers where I will be sharing exactly how I taught this so that other teachers can try it.

      
      

Final Thought: If you are a teacher or thinking of becoming one, your impact on students can be invaluable to them. Thank you!