Comment of the Week: Must Good Teachers Suppress Their Own Needs And Interests?
Friday January 9, 2009
Reader Will examined the Six Traits of Successful Teachers and particularly identified with the idea that good teachers must live outside of their own needs. As he commented:
[The above] dovetails too well into a remark of Nietzsche from his work, Human, All Too Human.If I understand this Nietzsche quote correctly, I think I can see both sides. I believe that teachers do need to learn to put themselves and their own egos aside when they are in the classroom, considering the needs of others more than their own. But I would assert that all educators can and should refill their own metaphorical wells by satisfying their own curiosities and passions whenever possible - even if it's only during vacations."Anyone who is a teacher is usually incapable of doing something on his own for his own benefit; he is always thinking of the benefit for his students, and any knowledge gives him pleasure only insofar as he can teach it. He considers himself finally as a passageway of knowledge and generally as a means, so that he has lost the ability to take himself seriously." [section 200 of chapter four]
Would you agree that the best teachers have "lost the ability to take [themselves] seriously?"
What do you think?
Comments
I agree: teachers who are not already burned out would do well to use their colleagues as an example. And teachers who are a bit selfish, using resources & accolades for their own purposes instead of for student learning, should get a clue.
I became a teacher in large part to share my passion for learning. If you have no passion of your own, I think you limit what you have to offer to your students. You also don’t know what may “click” with a particular group of students if you don’t have a particular expertise available. At one time or another my student have responded with enthusiasm to my interests ranging from whitewater rafting to piano and guitar to Spanish to the Phantom of the Operato travel overseas to weightlifting and jogging, and much more. I firmly believe that the fact that I have a rich life outside of teaching brings something extra to my classroom.
As a nurse, we were taught the same thing. The patients are considered first, but during days, weekends, holidays and vacations off we are to persue our other interests, especially enjoying friends and family. My mother was a teacher who gave housecleaning a “lick and a promise” until summer when my sister and I helped her houseclean thoroughly. She found time to read, such as at those notoriously long waits at the Doctors office, sewed, gardened,visited family, friends, and co-workers during during school breaks. She could cook very well, but had the time challenged habit of throwing some healthy to eat ingredients into a pot, or bowl and plunking it onto the table for us to eat. However, my mother was one of my best teachers.
I became a teacher so I could have the summer off. Just kidding!!
I think there are so many reasons why we do it. We want to make a difference in the lives of others. We know it isn’t for the money!
There is a difference between putting aside your own needs and becoming a emotionless robot. One must cast off the ego, but the teachers students love the most are the ones who DO share so much of themselves. My students know my passions, my interests, and some things that I don’t care for at all, just as I know the same about them. It gives us common ground and helps us connect as human beings.
I agree with Tracy. My students know about my family and some of the things I like and don’t like. I love what I do and during the school year put in 150% if not more however, I do make time for my own children and my husband. I think you have to make time for yourself or you will burn out very quickly.
I can’t even imagine entering a classroom without my personality on full display. I work with Emotionaly Distrubed Special Education Students in the Bronx. My patience, caring, and grandmotherly love enables me to reach many students that shut most people down, let alone their teachers. It is my personality that has gained their respect and desire to try to l earn and grown. Having entered teaching only recently I have so much history that I convay to them, from my learning disabilities as a student in the Midwest in the 50’s-60’s,the Civil Rights Movement, to just being able to answer their questions on ‘what it was like back then’. How could I leave all of that outside the classroom and deny them a lesson in history that is first hand, as well as if I can do it so can you…
Teachers should live outside their own needs? In my school we talk about the needs of students but it is not acceptable to voice (in a meeting) teacher needs. Then we look at teachers 2/3 on their way to retirement and call them “dead wood” and say they must be ousted. I think the system helps create burnout. I believe students need role models that consider everyone’s needs important and worthy of respect or we are doing teachers and students a disservice