By faithadminIn my office, on a small desk covered with Wall•E minifigures, Astro Boy and a minion carrying bananas you will also find my grade four class photo. I’m the smallish blonde boy in the middle row, fourth from the left. At the other end of the row is Mrs. Paterson. She is the reason the photo sits on my desk forty-four years later.
I don’t really remember much about what I learned in fourth grade. Now, as a primary teacher of many years myself, I can guess what was covered, and while it might be interesting, it’s not important. What I can remember is the way Mrs. Paterson made me feel about being in her class.
She had high standards. She challenged me. She believed that I could do it.
At a conference a few years ago, I sat and listened to Sir John Jones talk about the way schools should be. Amongst his humour were some truisms that all educators need to be thinking deeply about.
One was,
“Google can teach you history. Only teachers can teach you the LOVE of history!”
Like most other schools around the world, I urge teachers I work with to “address the standards” when they teach”. Follow UbD when you plan,” I say. “Start with the standards. Design the assessment. Build the plan.”
But in my more than twenty years of co-planning with teachers, I have never come across a standard addressing teaching the “love” of something. I’ve never asked a teacher to add a row in a rubric to read, “demonstrates a love of calculus”, or writing, or painting, or long division. And as I ponder this, I am wondering how to address this absence.
If the role of a teacher is to teach a “love of” something, be it maths or reading or history or simply (but not so simply) learning, where do we start? Where do we put all the effort in and how do we know if we’ve accomplished it? Can we use the final grade as a measure? Or is it less quantitative and more qualitative? Is it the number of students who choose to follow that subject as a career path? Is it the number of smiles on faces I see in classrooms as I walk through the school? Or is it the list of students eager to get into a particular class with a particular teacher?
Mrs. Paterson was my fourth-grade teacher and she is the one who taught me a “love of” something. She did it by challenging me, telling me I was able, and encouraging and caring for me as I made my attempts and failed, over and over again.
Maybe it is that simple. Maybe it is that and a bit more. Maybe what was right for Mrs. Paterson is different for you and me. Who knows?
As a school administrator, I don’t have the answer. I know when a teacher has it and I can see when a teacher doesn’t. I can give examples of it. I can attest to its importance. I can urge those without it to develop it. If you are a teacher, how are you developing in students the “Love of…” your subject? If you are a parent, what questions are asking the teachers of your children about how they teach your child to love learning? If you are not, maybe now is the time to start!