Sean Sharp’s ITRT Blog

We are about to finish up our state testing with tomorrow being the last day. It has all gone well this year with our computer systems, the software, the students and teachers. For that I am grateful and relieved. This time of year does bring up, for me anyways, the BIG QUESTIONS about what exactly we are doing as educators. As I sit down to compose my thoughts I realize that I can have a tendency to go down the path of “ranting” about SOL tests and I am going to try to avoid doing that here. At least that is a goal that I’m starting out with. There might be some ranting along the way, just to be sure. You have been warned.

So, with testing and especially the emphasis on testing I ask myself what makes a good teacher? Teachers are judged on how well their students perform on standardized tests. Yes, this is true. It is one piece of the puzzle that evaluations are made up of, but with the hyper-emphasis on test scores, I think it is weighted a little bit more. There is a sense of relief from teachers when the testing is over and especially when their students performed well and a large number of their group passed. Still, what makes a good teacher?

In my mind it isn’t only the test score that makes a good teacher. There is so much more to being an educator than just helping students learn material that they can then use to answer the questions correctly on a standardized test. Teaching, to me at least, is also about all of the intangibles that aren’t measurable that a teacher deals with each and every day. For example, if a student comes to school late or tired; if a student is afraid of other students because they are being teased and bullied; if a student is simply bored with the material that they are being taught in class; again, there is so much more.

When I think back on teachers that made a difference to me, it wasn’t the content that I remember. It wasn’t what they taught me that makes me remember them as good teachers. It is that they took an interest in me as a person. Flash back to 8th grade for me: Mr. Stuart’s english class. It was there that I began to feel confident that I could write ok. At least I was better at that than I was at math, I knew that for sure. But more than that, it was the following year in 9th grade when Mr. Stuart and I started talking about books that really made an impact. I wasn’t a huge reader at that point in my life, but in one conversation, he recommended a book to me. It was some science fiction novel, probably written by Robert Heinlein, but I can’t remember. Anyways, I read it. The whole thing. I brought it back to Mr. Stuart and we talked about it. He then grabbed another book off of his bookshelf and said, “try this one.” I did. Several books and conversations later I realized that I was reading. Whole books. All the way through. Of course I didn’t realize until much later that he and I had just formed our very own two person book club as well. Mr. Stuart taught me that I could read books that had a lot of pages in them, talk about them, but mostly just enjoy them. That was the key. Was he my “best” teacher ever? Probably not . . .that is hard for me to say. Was he a very influential teacher for me? Absolutely.

So, it is beyond the content and has to be beyond the content. As educators we aren’t just teaching four choices on a computerized exam that comes once a year. We are <hopefully> teaching about kindness, how to learn, to think, to reflect, to communicate and express thoughts and ideas clearly. As teachers we are small steps in each child’s life that will help them grow up to become adults who are engaged in the world around them. Hopefully.

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