I am of an age when most of my teacher friends are veterans of several decades in their classrooms. They are veterans in the sense that their real-life teaching careers span years of daily teaching and working with children in school classrooms. I like them for their commitment to the time and place of classroom teaching. Teaching is their calling; more than their job. Among those veterans also are teachers who are consummate professionals. Not only have they worked their decades, but they also grew professionally in their understanding and skillfulness as teachers. They are seasoned and constantly improved teachers. This is no accident but the result of their commitment to be better teachers over time. I like them for their time, but I love them for their commitment to the art and science of being a better teacher. These teachers do not grow on trees.
Better with age applies to somethings but not all. Sometimes aging is just what it is and things grow old. Food suppliers label perishables with “Best to use by” dates because food spoils, milk sours, and tastes go flat. We often hear a person say that something is aging like good wine. It is interesting that aging without use may improve its value, but once opened for consumption and not enjoyed in its time wine can lose its taste and go bad. Aging alone is not improvement.
A constant consideration of how teaching causes children to learn and consistent improvement of the relationship between teaching and learning are true measures of veteran professionals. They enter the profession with a beginner’s tool box of teaching skills. Year after year they use and test their teaching abilities. It is perfect and safe to say that the best teaching skills are complex and compound. One lesson prepares children to learn while another provides foundational instruction. A next lesson secures initial learning and the one that follows builds more content and skill. A subsequent lesson is a quick check to substantiate that each child is learning the right things and the following lesson reinforces what has been learned. Each lesson in turn exercises acquired and refined teaching strategies. While all of these are described in literature and taught in educator preparation programs, it is only when a teacher uses them in the classroom year after year that they become the tools of a veteran professional. Veteran professionals grow their complex and compound teaching skills carefully, with use, and over time.
The use of teaching skills is not mechanical and automatic. Children are a constantly moving target and causing one child to learn does not always equate to causing another child to learn or a whole class to learn. Each child is her own mystery and veteran teachers mull over options for teaching to find the right instruction that will cause each “mystery” to learn. They consider and apply complex and compound teaching skills to what each child needs to learn successfully. Children present themselves as hard and soft targets for teaching. The hard target is their capacity in learning a school curriculum – prescribed content, skills, and collaborative and collegial relationships. The soft target is the social-emotional personality of a child that affects her readiness and capacity to engage in learning. Veteran professionals constantly look at the two-faced nature of children as learners.
This focus is a distinguishing trait. Where less skillful teachers teach a lesson to the class, veteran professionals teach lessons within lessons to each child in a class.
To do this, veteran professionals have made data their friend and informant. They don’t wait until the end of a school year or a quarter or even until the end of a unit of instruction to study data resulting from their teaching. They look at it constantly. Formative data is collected and analyzed daily. Formative data directs tomorrow’s teaching. Summative data is collected in chunks over time and provides a holistic assessment of how well a child or all children are learning an annual or a grade band’s curriculum. Veteran professionals also look at the emotional data on the faces of each child. Is this child engaged and learning? Is this child being properly challenged with my instruction? Is this child engaging with classmates? What is happening in the life of this child that affects how she is in my classroom? What do these data tell me I need to do next? Veteran professionals have unofficial degrees in child psychology and sociology that are exercised every day in their teaching.
Veteran professional teachers are the motors that run our schools and advance the education of our children. This was never more apparent than in the early days of the pandemic. Panic was widespread when school campuses closed, teachers taught from home, and children were at-home learners. No teacher preparation readied us for this. Without fail, veteran professionals paused, grabbed the available technologies, and displayed a “we can do this” attitude to challenges that were changing daily. They adapted, adopted, adjusted, and taught their children. It is foolish to say that remote teaching and learning achieved the results possible with in-person teaching and learning. It is praiseworthy to say that professional veterans led the charge in connecting with remote children, providing daily instruction that kept children learning every day of the school year, and made proverbial lemonade from the lemons the pandemic dealt them.
Professional veteran teachers do not grow on trees. They rise out of the recently hired teachers and announce themselves with their attitudes and actions. School leaders who know that all teachers are not created equally see these young stars immediately. They have an air of humility tinged with a pride of work connected to the knowledge they can do even better. They possess and demonstrate an innate capacity to teach that goes far beyond what they learned in college classes and student teaching. Other teachers recognize them, also.
These young professionals are drawn to each other in their formative years and school leaders observe that they form their own cadres of peers – they know who they are, no labeling is necessary. If allowed, these teacher partnerships become the backbone of professional strength in a school. On many issues, the best school leaders support their developing young professionals and get out of their way.
In summary, every school has its veteran teachers, those who have been on staff for years. Veteran teachers give schools continuity. There is a significant difference though between a veteran who has taught the same lessons year after year and a professional veteran who has grown her teaching skills year after year. It returns us to the characterization of aging. Veteran teachers who do the same things year after year – they age and add a number to their years of experience. Their school remains, like them, the same over time. Professional veterans who constantly grow their skills, behaviors and push for constant improvement cause their school to be, like them, a constantly improving school over time.
Each conversation with these professional veteran teacher friends reminds me of the school treasures they are.