“I am a high school AP English Language and Composition teacher and a college professor of English composition,” writes Eduardo Barreto, a high school teacher at Palmer Trinity School and an adjunct professor of English Composition at Miami Dade College, in an Education Week article.
“I have the privilege of acknowledging the impact high school teachers had on my development.
“My drama teacher, whose attempt at cross-curricular teaching led him to offer extra credit to students who wrote vocabulary terms on index cards and practiced them in class, is probably the reason I was able to bolster my vocabulary.
“The college adviser who lent me an SAT book to study in her room during lunch is the reason I learned about the SAT in the first place—and definitely a major contributing factor to my college acceptance.
“And the AP teacher I observed for an assignment in an Intro to Education class made me see the possibility of teaching AP English in the future. She and I even ended up teaching side by side.
The kingmaker
“By the end of that Intro to Education class, we had to craft a statement of our personal teaching philosophy.
“I pledged as an educator to “think of myself as the perpetual kingmaker, never the king.
“I wrote ‘an educator influences the outcome but celebrates quietly from the shadows. Educators kneel so that others may stand on their shoulders.’
The perpetual learner
“I see truth in what I wrote. I now know that an educator must be a perpetual learner. To teach is to learn twice over. I may have learned to teach, but I teach that I may learn.
“My mentee phrased it this way in her first year of teaching: “I don’t know that I’ll be a good teacher, but I’m a hell of a learner.” She’s right: The best teacher is the best learner.
“Learning has become one of the defining characteristics of my professional and personal identity.
The true believer
“To feel the weight of a classroom, of the students’ collective education, of their future development and influence is an incredible feeling. It is filled with purpose. Those are days I feel like the Greek mythological figure Atlas—as though I can carry the future of the world on my shoulders.
“Teachers also have days when they push a rock of belief up a mountain and wonder, “does this really make a difference?” Even in those days, we still push the rock. We push the rock because we believe it matters, and that belief gives us courage.
“So, what does it mean to be an educator these days?
“My answer is largely the same as it was in my first teaching philosophy statement: The educator is the kingmaker. The educator is the perpetual learner. The educator should be the best student in the classroom. Those teachers are the best equipped to teach,” writes Barreto.
Education Week
