February 13-14, 2016: Teacher Tributes: My Fiancé

[For this year’s Valentine’s Day series, I decided to share some of my blog’s early Tribute Posts on teachers I have loved. Leading up to this special weekend post on a very special teacher!]Because of her job (as a middle school social studies teacher in a strong school system—which is to say, as someone who works with probably the most technologically connected, obsessed, and savvy cohort of students in the world), my fiancé wouldn’t want me to discuss any identifying details in this space. (This will probably be the least-hyperlinked post I ever write!) So I’ll try to keep this general while still identifying five ways this very talented and dedicated teacher I love (in a slightly different way from my other subjects this week, natch) inspires me:1)      Her Innovations: She’s been teaching for over 15 years, but is the polar opposite of the teacher who brings the same yellowed lecture notes to class each day. Not only does she innovate from one year to the next, but I’ve seen her on numerous occasions figuring out a new way to present a topic, draw out her students, address an area that’s not quite working from one day to the next. And of course she’s having to do so across multiple sections of the same class that nonetheless have to engage different students (both individually and as communities) and thus might (read: do) require different innovations as well. 2)      Her Resiliency: We all have days or times or aspects of our jobs that present challenges or frustrations, knock us down a notch or five, throw us for a serious loop. But I’m here to say that middle school teaching in 2015 has many, many more such aspects than does college professing, or many other jobs I’ve been around. My fiancé has had more than her share (more than anybody’s share) of challenges added onto those. And all she does is come back better and more determined than ever, not because it’ll make the challenges go away but because she’s stronger than they’ll ever be. 3)      Her Compassion: I can’t begin to enumerate all the ways in which middle school students—as individuals, as peers, as family members, as citizens of communities—present challenges that go well beyond content and the classroom (although that too). No middle school teacher can ignore all those contexts, but I know for a fact that many choose to prioritize the content and the classroom, and to let students and families come to them for anything else. Fair enough, but my fiancé illustrates the power and potency of the opposite: of having concern and compassion for where her students are, in every sense, and for doing everything she can to meet and address each of them there (without losing any classroom rigor). 4)      Her Collegiality: This one’s simple to say but very hard to pull off: she cares about her colleagues and their success as much as she does her students and theirs. To quote Charles Dickens, may that be truly said of us, and all of us!5)      Her Passion: What those four, and so many other, elements add up to is someone who cares so deeply and fully, someone who brings the same passion to her job that she brings to the rest of her life (which is to say, as my sons would put it, a googolplex amount). That’d be damn inspiring in any person and profession—but in a teacher, it’s infinitely more so.Annual post-Valentine’s non-favorites series starts Monday,BenPS. Teachers to whom you’d pay tribute? Other loves you’d share?