There is no I in teacher

Back to school for children means back to school for teacher educators as well. One of the highlights of my job is the time I get to spend in elementary school classrooms as I observe student teachers. What a delightful way to “go to work.”

This past week as I wandered the school hallways in search of the classrooms of my newest group of student teachers I overheard lots of teacher talk. Teacher voices floated into the hallway from inside classrooms and there were plenty of traffic jams as teachers moved children through hallways (gives a completely different meaning to the term “human trafficking”). Here are some snippets of the language overheard on these walkabouts:

             I like the way the yellow table is sitting.

I want you to close the gap at the end of this line.

I love how this line is moving.

I need you guys to focus.

I notice this table is ready.

I am looking for students who have their hands behind their backs.

I,I,I,I,I!

So many of the statements started that way. But there is no I in “teacher.” If asked to explain their teaching/learning philosophies or to outline their vision of the classroom communities they are working to create it is hard to imagine a single teacher stating that s/he strives for a teacher-centered classroom. And yet-

I,I,I,I,I!

Our children are getting a steady diet of language that seems to be centered on the teacher’s wants, the teacher’s needs, what the teacher likes, what the teacher loves, what the teacher notices. It is all about the teacher. Is that the message we mean to convey?

There is no I in teacher but there are two other words: “reach” and “each.”  In the margin of my page, this appeared:

TEACHER

                E

                A

                C

        EACH

It looks a bit like an incomplete upper case letter I – just as a classroom is incomplete with only the teacher.

One way to read

TEACHER

                E

                A

                C

        EACH

is to read across- teacher, down - reach, across – each. “Teacher reach each.” Well that works since it is the teacher’s job to reach each child.

Maybe this is a better representation:

TEACHERS

                E

                A

                C

        EACH

or this:

TEACHERs

                  E 

                     A

                         C

                            H

Making “teacher” plural enables us to focus on two different meanings of the phrase. “Teachers, reach each” vs. “Teachers reach each.” (Behold the power of the comma!) The first is a directive, a reminder of our charge as educators. The second is a declarative statement of what we accomplish as educators.

Let’s each reach to think about our language use and challenge ourselves to replace some “I” with more “you.” How can we change the I statements above so that the focus is on the children? How will a person overhearing us know that our classroom is child centered?

Still Learning… to teach,   Dr. G