Posts

Showing posts from September, 2010

School Week! What Makes a Teacher Great?!

Image
This week, students return to school across America where much energy and effort is focused on improving public schools and student performance. Despite recent significant financial awards aimed at these ends, my guess is educational transformation starts with parents, and then teachers. Teachers appear to be the more controllable variable in this equation. To help parents and students determine whether this year's pedagogues show promise, I decided to reflect and investigate to share traits making teachers great. Peter Senge, in his Book “The Fifth Discipline” states the key trait distinguishing thriving people and organizations is their ability to learn from their experiences. Creating possibility requires learning from our experiences, rather than being defined and immobilized by them. A great teacher creates this possibility. Thanksgiving week during my senior year in high school was a pivotal week in my life. My mom was buried the Friday before. She died late that Tuesday