So You Really Want to Be a Teacher ?

How often do we hear phrases like “you love history so much, so you should really teach the subject or “you love Chumash and Gemara so you should be a Rebbe.”

Loving a particular subject is never enough. It will not get you through the day when it’s raining and your class cannot enjoy outside recess, when two students are fighting in the classroom, when the copier is broken, or for that matter when a parent sends you a long exhausting and contentious email about why you are doing everything wrong.

You want to be a teacher because you love watching a human grow and develop intellectually emotionally and academically or when a student is inspired through intellectual curiosity and exemplary middot and values.

What graduate programs, teacher’s colleges and seminaries will not tell you is that as a teacher you will probably be totally invisible and at the same time unforgettable.

In fact, if you do this job right, you will in all probability never see most of the results.

The boy you finally taught how to learn Gemara after three months of staying after class will not thank you this year. He will thank you in 15 years from now when he is learning with his own son and suddenly remembers how you as his rebbe taught him to read and understand a piece of Rashi and Tosfot.

The girl who was terrified to speak publically in class, who you coaxed to say one sentence, and then one day becomes a master teacher herself because you showed her that her voice matters.

You will plant trees with deep roots and whose shade you will never sit in.

If you need immediate applause or recognition, you are in the wrong profession or teach somewhere else. This job pays in compound interest, 20 years later.

You are not teaching a subject. You are teaching a child how to inquire, wonder, struggle or wrestle with a difficult concept.

Remember that anyone can explain a math or physics problem. But AI can do it better, faster, and with nicer graphics.

A good teacher does something AI can never do. A teacher sits with a student in his or her struggle and doesn’t rescue him too quickly.

An exemplary teacher doesn’t say to a student figure out the answer to the math problem on your own but rather I know it’s very difficult, let’s try to figure it out together, step-by-step.

Being an effective teacher means helping the learner determine how to discover the answer. It’s like teaching someone how to catch fish as opposed to just handing over the fish.

The most effective learning happens during those uncomfortable 4 minutes when a student wants to quit. “I can’t.” “This is too hard.” “I’m just not good at this, and never will be”.

An ineffective teacher says, “Here, let me show you the answer.” By doing so you never encourage or empower the student to figure it out on his or her own.

A good teacher says, “You’re right, this is hard. Stay with it for two more minutes. I’m right here.”

You are teaching students that they can do hard things. That lesson is worth more than any curriculum. That is chinuch. That is menschlichkeit. That is what they will take to their marriage, to their parnassah and to their own parenting.

It’s about motivation and resilience and it’s about staying the course and never giving up.

Your lesson plan is not your job. Your students are your job.

You will spend Sunday night creating a beautiful lesson plan. Perfect sources, perfect slides, perfect handouts.

On Monday morning, a student will walk into the classroom crying because his parents had very contentious argument. Another child didn’t sleep because his baby sister was up crying all night with a bad cold. Another student is buzzing with excitement because she or he was finally accepted into the yeshiva high school of choice.

Your beautiful lesson plan just became irrelevant.

Great teachers know that lesson plans are critically important, but people are more important. Sometimes you throw the plan away and you just teach the kids in front of you. Sometimes you spend the whole period talking about being a good friend because that’s what the room needs that day.

The curriculum is what you teach. The kids are why you teach. We should never confuse the two.

You will be exhausted in a way no one else can possibly understand.

Not physically exhausted but rather soul exhausted.

Because to be a good teacher you have to care, and caring is very tiring. You carry 25 neshamot in your head all day. You wonder if you were too harsh with that one. Too soft with that one. Did you reach the quiet student in the corner?

You will go home and replay conversations. You will wake up at 2am thinking of a better way to explain a particular idea, concept or value.

This is normal. It means that you are indeed a teacher.

The ones who are not tired are the ones who stopped caring. Try to never to become one of them.

So why do we do it?

Because there is no other job in the world like it.

In what other job can you take a child who thinks he is nothing and show him he is something? In what other job do you get to be the person who says, “I believe in you” when no one else does, and have that reality actually change a life?

In what other job can you take raw material and help shape it into a person who can think, who can choose, and who can serve?

The world will tell you that teachers do not earn a lot of money; they don’t get a lot of respect from the public; and, they don’t have status.

The world is wrong. A teacher has the only status that matters. The Rambam says that a teacher is like a father, because a father brings a child into this world, but a teacher brings the child into olam habah, the world to come.

So in light of the above, do still aspire to be a teacher?

We need you. The kids need you. Klal Yisrael needs you.

Roll up your sleeves. The copier is still broken, it’s still raining outside, and there is a child in the third row waiting for someone to finally believe he or she can learn.

He’s been waiting for you.

B’hatzlacha‎