Teachers, Teach - Don't Preach!

The crisp dry September air is hurtling around August' corner, and you can feel, taste, and smell the first days of school, looming tantalizingly behind that inspiration you received during the quickly fading summer. Yet inspired though you may feel, you still cannot overcome the frustrations of last year, when student apathy and lack of interest in your goods made teaching day to day seem like an eternity. What can you do, you ponder, to make this year different? How can you motivate your students, both the slackers and the hackers? Maybe some simple advice holds the answer.

To repeat the oft muttered aphorism that teaching is a difficult task is like playing a played-out song. You have already heard all the cliches, replete with worldly wisdom of how teaching is sometimes a thankless job, but if you can save just one student then the career is all worth it; that teaching touches lives; that teaching may not pay but the intangible rewards make it all worth the
pain. What hogwash! Who invented these platitudes?

All sarcasm aside, teaching is a great profession, one to be extolled not vilified. I feel justified in making such an assessment as I once belonged to this noble profession, but now choose to write about it and to teach through other venues. If I were to give one piece of advice to those valiant souls out there about to embark on their first year of teaching, or to even those who are reaching back to try their wares one more time in this challenging vocation, then I would have to say simply, teach don't preach.

Yes, that is all. Teachers, teach. Don't preach. Don't preach about your life, about the current world situation, about politics, about preferences, about your favorite color, no. Don't do it, I say. Rather, teach your subject with a discipline and a passion unrivaled in America. Don't be distracted by how the others are doing it-your colleagues, that is. Oh, and don't worry about the administration and what they think, because the truth is if you don't already have tenure, then they will get rid of you on a whim, and you therefore should do what you believe in anyway; on the other hand, if you already have tenure, then this all becomes a moot point.

Just teach without regard to consequence. If you teach with passion and with the objective of enlightening and bettering your students as people, as human beings, as citizens---then the rest does not matter. How much you know of your subject becomes secondary when you show a true concern for the enrichment of your students' minds. Try this philosophy out and then see how all of a sudden you are considered a master teacher. Just don't blame me when all your colleagues are jealous because they cannot figure how you have the highest ratings in the school.

See more of my articles here at Articles Page and see my challenging brainteasers here at Problem of the Week and Cool Brain Teasers.

Joe is a prolific writer of self-help and educational material and an award-winning former teacher of both college and high school mathematics. Joe is the creator of the Wiz Kid series of math ebooks, Arithmetic Magic, the little classic on the ABC's of arithmetic, the original collection of poetry, Poems for the Mathematically Insecure, and the short but highly effective fraction troubleshooter Fractions for the Faint of Heart. The diverse genre of his writings (novel, short story, essay, script, and poetry)-particularly in regard to its educational flavor- continues to captivate readers and to earn him recognition.

Joe propagates his teaching philosophy through his articles and books and is dedicated to helping educate children living in impoverished countries. Toward this end, he donates a portion of the proceeds from the sale of every ebook. For more information go to http://www.mathbyjoe.com