Be the best and "raise" the best

I would say, for the most part, I agree with the statement "In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have." My husband and I were just talking the other night about how much a responsibility teachers have to help mold generations. We were discussing the things our teachers were allowed to do, versus the restrictions on teachers now-a-days, and how we understand when our parents start stories with "back in my day..." When you really think about it, the vast majority of our students have limited access to adults: their parents and their teachers. Not only are we responsible for doing our job and teaching them the subject matter assigned, but we are also an example of how human beings should act. Think about it, if little Bobby only hears me, his teacher, an adult he spends several hours with per week, constantly complain about my job, gripe about low pay, use the phrase "that's not my responsibility", etc., then little Bobby will think that is how you are expected to act as an adult. This is especially true if his parents or other family members act the same way. It breaks my heart when I hear teachers counting down the days until the next break or until retirement. I firmly believe that if you don't love what you do, do something else. I have made my husband promise me that as soon as I dread coming to school and spending time educating these kids, that he better give me a good shaking and tell me to go do something else. I feel that I was selected for this job because I was among the best at what I do, and all teachers should be held to that same standard.

Good teaching and uniqueness

I would like to answer the second question first, like Tonya did. The reason why each one of us is unique is that each has DNA that is uniquely different from every other human being on the planet Earth. From there, one can see that of those people that have taken the profession of teaching, they will, of necessity, have different approaches, different beliefs, different starting points and different philosophies regarding teaching. Their own different experiences in life and in the field of teaching also contribute to the differentiation. Therefore, we should expect that people will have different ideas about what good teaching is. The word "good" itself may have different meanings according to who the person is.

Just looking at the responses of my colleagues in this class, one can run through all of them and pick up very good points that would improve teaching for each and every one of us. Even then, we would probably differ in where we lay emphasis.

Good teaching, for me, means awakening the potentialities inherent in each and every human being. Everything else comes second to that. I may never know that the potentialities have been awakened. I may recognize years later that a student has been positively affected by my teaching. Merely scoring high is not necessarily a good measure of awakening the potentialities, although it is necessary (for purposes of accountability) that we encourage students to perform. High grades also ensure continued growth in one or more fields that the student may choose to follow. The acquisition of good marks without cheating is one of the major aims of education. And so, I would look at the student's longer lifetime to see whether there has been anything that I did or that I encouraged during class that has rubbed off in the student.

In the final analysis, it is the students' contribution to the well-being of society by which we should measure the value of our contact with them. The details of how to achieve this may, indeed, differ from one teacher to another. But the overall goal never changes.