Eyes on the Prize

"Teaching is at its heart an act of hope for a better future. The rewards of teaching are neither ostentatious nor obvious -  they are often internal, invisible, and of the moment. But   paradoxically, they can be deeper, more lasting, and less illusory than the cut of your clothes or the size of your home. The rewards of teaching might include watching a youngster make a connection and come alive to a particular literacy, discipline, or way of thinking, or seeing another child begin to care about something or someone in a way that he never cared before, or observing a kid become a person of values because you treated her as a valuable person. There is a particularly powerful satisfaction in caring in a time of carelessness and of thinking for yourself in a time of thoughtlessness. The reward of teaching is knowing that your life can still make a difference." (William Ayers, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, page 37)

At this point in the quarter, it is easy to get discouraged by the sheer mountain of work and the many tensions involved in teaching. How do we manage our time, both now and when we become teachers? How do we decide, for example, which parts of the curriculum are essential and which must be left out due to time constraints? How do we balance the needs of individual students with the needs of the class as a whole? How do we meet assessment standards while giving our students the opportunity to do authentic, meaningful work? How do we make these choices? How do we find the balance?

A look back at Ayers today reminded me to keep close the reasons I want to teach - that essential drive that makes me feel that I simply must teach - that feeling that teaching is the thing that I simply cannot not do. When we get discouraged or overwhelmed, we need to pause to look into the eyes of our students and notice their curiosity, their desire to learn.  We need to step back from the demands of assessment and curriculum standards for a moment to remember why we chose to teach ... and remember that our lives can still make a difference in the lives of our students and the lives they touch as they go out into the world to create the future.