Mr Alec Santucci, English and Languages Coordinator for Years 7-12 at Hills Christian Community School, explores how a teacher’s impact outlives their classroom experiences.
It is no secret that teaching, as a requisite of the job, requires a diverse range of skills. Some of these skills, like effective communication, seem to connect with most aspects of the role, whether it be with colleagues or students. But other important skills such as adaptability, collaboration, creativity, patience, time management and organisation are harder to explicitly observe, these competencies interweave in the classroom. Just as a good dancer makes a series of distinct movements appear seamless, a good teacher also combines a range of strategies in a flow-like manner. But the ease of a dancer’s dance or a teacher’s instruction, for that matter, is often a result not of talent, but of time.
Teaching comprises elements in a vast and sometimes contrasting manner, which bonds together competencies in an overarching system of knowledge. We can think of these as ‘systems of thinking’. Some examples include creating routines, building positive rapport with students or adapting to real time changes in the classroom. These processes slowly become engrained, a teacher develops a sense of autonomous processing, in which actions no longer become conscious decisions, but instinctual choices based on experience.
Teaching stands apart from other professions because of the potential it has for significant positive individual impact. Those who work in education have the potential to change people’s lives, for good or for bad; it only takes one teacher to change a student’s view on education. For a teacher that cannot contribute to a student’s development actually degrades their understanding. Just like how a logger may gain wealth from cutting down a forest at the cost of its environmental impact, a teacher’s potential to neglect a student’s individual learning has a similar effect. In the long term, a depleted forest affects the ecological systems around it, likewise a teacher’s actions may not have consequences until years to come.
Just as poor education can have significant consequences, positive formative experiences don’t readily leave individuals. Good teachers plant seeds; growths of knowledge and understanding. It takes courage to care about another person’s education, this investment in student knowledge is what many teachers do everyday. Such an investment brings a form of wealth unable to be measured in funds, it is only seen through the intellectual enrichment a teacher can provide for a student.
Over time teachers develop a professional vision, a way in which classroom management becomes naturally ingrained. With increased mastery, professional knowledge and understanding, they find strategies that make their classrooms run effectively. Just as an artist adapts to the different textures of a canvas or the type of brush, the teacher adjusts to the needs of their students, the school environment and the evolving requirements of the role. Where an artist is the inventor of their work, teachers are inventors of learning.
Education is an evolving and changing landscape. It is shaped by students as much as it is by teachers. Generational change, change in educational theory and national curriculum all contribute. This requires teachers to adapt and refrain from relying too heavily on only one style of instruction. A teacher who does not engage in the acquisition of knowledge is an extinguished flame, unable to light a fire for which learning must burn. But a teacher willing to be shaped by the process of inquiry burns feverously, like a bright candle sparking in the night.
Teaching is a complex, integrated practice which is developed through various systems of thinking. Together these competencies combine to make teaching less about conscious decision making and more about reflexive, experience-based action. Teachers have a unique influence on a student’s attitude toward learning, wielding the capacity to have significant positive long-term impact. A teacher’s professional vision is developed through not only experience, but continual learning and growth. Like all arts, no amount of experience fully allows for a sense of complete mastery. It is not a ‘completion’, but a journey of progressive experimentation and growth.
Teachers do great things not for themselves but for their students. Their impact outlives their classroom experiences, it can even outlive their working lives, living on in the memory of their students or of their colleagues. A skillset that has that capacity for change is not a mere vocation, but an art that perpetuates from generation to generation.
