What is a Teacher?

Teachers are leaders.  Leaders by nature demonstrate excellence.  Leaders demand excellence from themselves and from those they lead.  Leaders motivate others to be excellent.  Leaders believe in a vision of excellence and work to transmit that vision of excellence to those around them.  Many leaders are inherently excellent. “High achievers” we might call them.  Many of our students share those same qualities, yet have not realized them yet.  Some may have the traits associated with leadership, but manifest those traits in certain situations or in specific environments.  Some do not show any qualities of a leader, at least not yet or not in the context we see them.  Regardless of innate ability, all leaders do share at least one thing in common.  They learn through time and trial, to be excellent.  They learn that to be excellent requires certain ways of being.  That is, the right ways of being.  The right ways of thinking.  The right ways of acting.  Through this “Right Way” leaders not only learn themselves, they also model the skills, attitudes, approaches, and processes through which others can be excellent.  Leaders model and thus teach the “Right Way.”

For teachers, the “Right Way” is not (as it may sound) a singular approach to achieving “excellence”, and therefore a “one-size-fits-all” method for implanting certain knowledge or skills onto each student.  Rather, truly excellent teachers pursue and model the “Right Way” and demonstrate the shared qualities that excellent people possess.  These qualities include, but are not-limited too, perseverance, dedication, moral fortitude, principled action, flexibility, oneness, conscientiousness, self-awareness, and integrity.  Are these not the same qualities we want to see in our students?  We want our students to take risks, knowing that failure is a possibility yet still mustering whatever courage they have.  We want our students to show dedication and fight for themselves as they work towards their goals.  We want students to demonstrate upstanding character and become role models for the people in their communities.  We want our students to organize their life around a vision and a set over hierarchical principles of action.  We want our students to be flexible and have the ability to adapt to new ideas, new problems, new perspectives and new people.  We want our students to have a firm ground on which they can stand and from which they can strive towards their goals.  We want our students to make known that others can rely on them to be thoughtful and serious workers, and that their fellow students are resources for learning.  We want our students to be reflective and to be aware of the impact of their decisions.  We want our students to show basic respect, honesty and generosity.  If our students can integrate these values over time, and they become the excellent individuals we want them to be, surely we have succeeded as a teacher.  Surely we have fulfilled our role as a leader.

Teachers, secondly, are masters.  They are master communicators.  They have mastered the art of taking complex ideas and making them simple.  They are master thinkers and have acquired the ability to contend with difficult ideas.  They can also identify “ideas worth sharing” and are master questionnaires.  Masters of imagination.  They are masters in their subject and have, over time and trial, developed an inventory of knowledge and skills specific to their subject that can be automatically deployed without hesitation and whenever needed.  They are master craftsmen.  To achieve the status of master, one must spend countless hours, days, weeks, months and years honing their skills.  Their ways of thinking, their work habits, their decisions, their actions and their time culminate into an all-encompassing level of excellence that cannot be replicated.  Furthermore, once one achieves mastery, they have therein established a true style that differentiates them from anyone else and is easily recognizable to all.  Herein lies the second role of a teacher.  A teacher demonstrates the skills and knowledge a master in the subject has acquired and asks the students to do the master’s work. 

All masters, like leaders, share certain qualities and share a philosophy of the Right Way.  That philosophy may differ from others, yet all have decided that there is a path that must be followed in order to reach that esteemed status.  That path has both the elements of a pre-determined and oft-trodden journey done by those before while also being shrouded by the fog that blinds individuals on their personal struggle to excellence.  To this end, a teacher must demonstrate and show students the right modes of thinking, the right tools and the right attitude needed to work towards mastery in the subject.

Essentially, students must do the work of a master.  In a business class, students should do the work of a master businessman and entrepreneur.  In a science class, students should do the work of a master scientist.  In a history class, students should do the work of a master historian.  By doing the work of a master, a student not only learns the necessary knowledge and skills to do the work in that subject, but they can begin to uncover the hidden questions that drove the master to pursue their craft.  In doing so, students now understand why they are learning about and perhaps should care about the subject.  This takes care of the shallow focus many teachers have regarding, “How do I motivate my students?”  Students will motivate themselves if they have reason too.  Overemphasis on this question can actually backfire when the methods used for motivating students do not apply to the work of mastery. 

When this concept of mastery, of doing the work of a mathematician, historian or businessman, is applied to an entire curriculum and set of subjects, students begin to uncover these hidden questions in all their studies.  They want to.  They want to practice the process of questioning, investigating, and discovering.  The same process that a masters undertakes when pursuing a deeper understanding of their craft.  It gives students the agency we teachers claim to desire and fulfills the leading ambition of modern liberal education: the “well-rounded student.” To the greatest extent, students now not only understand what they are really interested in (some might say they have found their calling), they also understand and can appreciate the value of school and the value of learning.  In an age of instant gratification and shallow information, students learn to accept the uncomfortable truth that work is a pre-requisite for achieving excellence.  In fact, they seek out the and look for the hard work that is necessary for pursuing their goals.  Once this roadblock is removed, students can act on their own essential questions and become life-long learners.  When students reach the point where they investigate their own essential questions, they have now begun the long and arduous journey on the road to mastery. 

In summary, teachers are leaders and masters.  The fact that they have dedicated their time to teaching others in their subject of choice shows that they have achieved much in their own right.  Teachers have earned (and continue to earn with each passing year) the privilege to show others how to pursue excellence in their own lives.  As leaders, they understand that there is a Right Way to live, act, think and be.  They understand that if students are to live meaningful lives that they must develop and acquire certain traits.  There is no accurate combination, no “special sauce,” no “set of standards” that one must have in order to achieve excellence.  They just need the right balance of these traits that work for the individual.  As masters, teachers demonstrate the exact approaches and methods one must use to achieve a level of excellence within a given subject.  To this end, students emulate their “masters;” honing the skills their teachers have developed.  In doing so, students become “who they truly are” because they understand what it takes to pursue a desired goal or vision and have acquired the skills to decide where to apply their efforts in the future.  They have also become true life-long learners, as they have the tools to ask and answer the meaningful questions that define life.  The teacher has a unique position in the lives of their students and by demonstrating the necessary qualities of leaders and masters, fulfills the ultimate role of a teacher and justifies the esteemed position to which teachers have been historically granted.