Week 02: Response to "Is the Great American Teacher Dead?

    When I started going back to school and decided what I wanted to do, I was excited. That excitement didn’t seem to be shared with everyone I told. “I’m going into teaching!” was met with, “Why would you do that?” Red tape, teaching the test, underpaid, overworked, hands tied to do any real teaching, kids these days don’t listen or care - These are only a sampling of the negatives that I heard from numerous people. This left me with a gloomy feeling. Is it possible to enjoy teaching? I have great memories of teachers in my past that guided me though not only Algebra and Creative Writing, but through life as well. These were great teachers! Is it possible to still be a great teacher today? 

    

    I am still very early on in my educational pursuit, so I don’t know much about the bureaucracy involved in the school systems currently. I don’t know exact salaries or how much work outside of classroom hours is expected. I do know that I’m not getting into teaching to become rich and not have to do any work. Certainly every job has negatives. Why should that limit my ability to be a great teacher? After all, I’m going down this path for the students and that will be an easier task. 

Right? 

Maybe not. 

6 seconds. 

    That is all is takes for a student to rate a teacher’s effectiveness. 6 seconds! (Based on a study by psychologist Nalini Ambady and found in “Is the Great American Teacher Dead?” by John Ivers) What can a person tell in just 6 seconds? They can see your physical appearance. They can hear your tone of voice. They can see your body presence. That is just about the extent of what they can grab. 

    “We tested Seven-Up. We had several versions, and what we found is that if you add fifteen percent more yellow to the green on the package - if you take this green and add more yellow to the green on the package - what people people report is that the taste experience has a lot more lime or lemon flavor. And people were upset. ‘You are changing my Seven-Up! Don’t do a ‘New Coke’ on me.’ It’s exactly the same product, but a different set of sensations have been transferred from the bottle, which in this case isn’t necessarily a good thing.” (“Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, pg. 163) 

    

If tiny color changes on a bottle of Seven-Up can cause different taste sensations, it would make sense that small changes to posture, voice tone, and other small presentation factors would play a part in the snap judgements made by students. Does this mean that my effectiveness as a teacher boils down to the first 6 seconds? No, but those certainly won’t hurt my chances! 

    John Ivers cherry picked a set of human universals from a list by Donald Brown (published in The Blank Slate by Steven Plinker). Ivers uses his cherry picked list to suggest that “Maybe these cross-cultural universals, deeply embedded in one’s psyche, immediately generate recognition of great teaching.” 

Ivers’ list (the comments in parentheses are his own thoughts and not those of Brown)

• Abstraction in speech and thought (go deep)
• Aesthetics (a good delivery)
• Concept of Fairness
• Concern for self-image (enhance the feeling of security and a positive self-concept in one’s students)
• Dance (the teacher moving around the classroom and making gestures might be helpful)
• Empathy
• Generosity admired (be fair, not a tyrant)
• Imagery (importance of examples and stories cannot be overstated)
• Jokes (keeping attention through humor is good)
• Marking at phonemic, syntactic, and lexical level (a good delivery)
• Prestige from proficient use of language Metaphor (maybe the essence of thinking itself) 
• Play Poetry/Rhetoric (a good delivery)
• Poetic lines demarcated by pauses (a good delivery)
• Rhythm (a good delivery)
• Special speech for special occasions
• Symbolic speech 

    This list is a good starting spot for me to really think about how each of these universals relate to being a great teacher. Applying these universals to myself and my presence in a classroom setting (though I think they would do well to improve my presence in any setting that I have interactions with others!) will help my in those first 6 seconds and then work to confirm the initial positive reaction of my students. Once past those initial perceptions, how do I work to obtain the status of “Great Teacher?” Again, I think back to my own teachers that stood out to me. What did they have? What made them great? 

• Class was never boring. 
• They made it interesting and engaging. 
• They always took care to check in on the individual lives of students. 
• It wasn’t hard to get a good grade. 
•  They would tell stories about their own lives and experiences (even in math when it might not make sense to) 
• They taught us about life as well as academics. 

    My quick list is telling. Teachers that are there to connect and aid the students are the ones that stand out and make a difference. Ivers ends “Is the Great American Teacher Dead” with this thought, “Some of my friends who have served in the military have informed me that they were taught that if one wants to complete the mission, the first order of business is to take care of the troops. If one takes care of the troops, the mission will have the best chance of success. If we take care of our students, our mission of educating them will be greatly facilitated.” 

    If my mission as a teacher is educating and inspiring students, then taking care of my students should be my priority. This makes me enthusiastic and excited once again. Great teachers are not dead. Their work is cut out for them, but it is a possibility. If I am intentional in where my focus and priorities lie, I can be a great teacher.