Deep Thoughts: My Role As A Teacher

I believe a teacher’s role in the classroom can be explained with this short video capturing one of life’s biggest moments.
 

Supplemental Text

After years of reflection about what it is I’m supposed to be doing as a teacher, I have concluded that my role is to put students on a path, push them in the right direction, and let them figure it out on their own.

This job description might seem too simple because it can be said in one sentence. Simple doesn’t mean easy.

Weebles Wobble

As the video demonstrates, once students have been pointed in the right direction and given a nudge, the teacher must then watch as they try to figure it out. This is the most difficult, and rewarding, process for a teacher.

Watching students figure it out can be discomforting. All the wobbling makes you dizzy, but it’s important for a teacher not to hover and hold hands. Otherwise, students won’t learn.

You shouldn’t have time to hold hands anyway. As a teacher you’re too busy watching out for the real learning inhibitors. If you let one of those through, it’ll topple the whole learning process.

Frenchtons

Learning inhibitors are difficult to catch for a teacher who’s on their A-game, and they’re impossible to stop for those slacking on the job.

Contrary to student perception failure isn’t a learning inhibitor. It’s often a requirement to learning how to do something on your own.

In the video the learning inhibitor was an excitable Frenchton named Mattie Rose, but in the classroom, learning inhibitors include things like an unsafe learning environment; memorization-based rubrics; limited ideas and resources; and the mother of all learning inhibitors, student and teacher attitude and effort levels.  

Lifelong Learning

It’s not my job to spoon-feed information, and it’s certainly not my job to hand out grades. It’s my job to teach students how to think for themselves and to encourage them through all the wobbles, stutters, and setbacks to do so long after they have left my classroom.

Note: I'm not implying students are babies. The video was just a metaphor.

Another Note: The video could also be a metaphor for the positive and negative effects of technology in the classroom.