Teach Me, Teacher: Life Lessons That Taught Me How to Be a Better Teacher

by Jacob Chastain

I began to ask some basic but powerful questions: What if I shared a story about myself? What if I asked them to share one of their own? What if I sat down with a student in a moment of downtime and we just talked—teacher to student, adult to child, person to person? What if we had a pair-share about something happening in our lives? What if we did a team-building activity that was designed to foster community in our classroom?

My view is that work should be a huge part of who you are, not just what you show up to do every day. If you choose the right work, it is as much a part of you as breathing.

If we want to make a difference, to truly make an impact on our students and their world, then we must let ourselves become the work. We must be consumed by it. The teachers making the biggest differences today do this. They are teachers to the core. It is who they are.

but the most important thing is showing our students there is a better world out there.

learning is just as important as the will to live.

Would our world be a better place if we helped young minds discover the pure joy of learning about the great facts and mysteries about our world?

In some ways it requires teaching the students for who they can be, not who they are today.

We don’t show up to give learning; we show up to allow learning to occur.

But if we have put in the early work of creating classrooms that foster learning, even when we are struggling, we will see the success we all wish for our students.

To get our students to that next level of care, we have to bring our passion to the class.

Passionate teachers don’t teach a love for reading and writing; they empower students to become independent readers and writers. They model. Combine this with hard work and dedication to the craft and art of teaching, and you have a special educator. It’s what we should all strive to be.

I fundamentally believe a passion for education and teaching is one of the most vital skills a teacher can have because it will bind them to their students and inspire those students to learn beyond the grades and the assignments. If we are talking about setting up our students for an amazing life outside of the walls of our campuses, and I hope we are, then this should be our primary goal.

If ELA teachers aren’t using their class time to allow children to read, explore, and interact with books in an authentic manner, then they are wasting those precious minutes. It isn’t enough to give your students one day a week to read; we must give them time to read every single day.

As English teachers, it’s our job to know our students and teach for what they need. The students come first, not the content.