Whoever penned the phrase “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach” probably wasn’t a very good student. Don’t misunderstand– being a good student has nothing to do with how quickly you learn material. Being a good student is about how one works with the knowledge presented to them. A good student pushes their teachers with thoughtful questions and new observations about material that others accept at face value.
With that said, teachers are often underestimated no matter what kind of students they have. Being a teacher is a bit of a thankless job. Though there are a plethora of traits that make for even a decent teacher, I recently came accross a website that really emphasizes one of the underlooked roles that teachers often play: investigators of the mind.
Mathmistakes.com is a community where educators share the work of their children and collaborate to reconstruct each mental step the child took in making the errors that they make. They do this to help each other learn different ways of thinking to try and educate in a way that doesn’t leave their students vulnerable to any logical fallacies. What is most amazing, in my opinion, is that these teachers do all of their with their own free time. They spend hours of their own time analyzing the mad scrawlings of a small child to try and understand why just one child made one mistake to improve the quality of education they provide for ALL of their students.
Which brings me back to that detestable saying. It’s not that teachers teach when they cannot “do”. What teachers do by exploring the minds of their students is an amazing feat all in it’s own. Every moment they are in a classroom, they’re working hard to walk children down the path of grasping the abstract. In fact, this may be the very reason they make it look so easy. They have already poured their hearts into paving the mental potholes on the road to understanding. A poor student drags their feet across the road and complains about their teacher making them walk.
A good student doesn’t have time to waste complaining about their teacher; they are too busy learning how lay down a longer road.
photo credit: R.E. Barber Photography
Victory Step Education Team
