Good Teaching is More Than What's on Screen

One of the surest ways to ruin your viewing experience of a television show or film is to watch alongside someone who shares the same occupation or profession as the protagonist. As a teenager, I endured an episode of a hospital-based drama with a family friend who was a physician, and all I recall was a barrage of incredulous commentary: “That would never happen!” and “You have no idea how expensive that test is” and  “Where’s the paperwork?” Needless to say, my hope for escapism didn’t match this friend’s demands for verisimilitude; I never watched the show again.

And to be fair, I’ll readily acknowledge that I’m probably the wrong company when schools and teachers are on screen. Sitting down with me to watch, say, Dead Poets Society is going to exasperate anyone looking to pass some quiet time with Robin Williams and some idyllic scenes of boarding school life in the 1950s. If you know this film, you’ll recall Williams’ “Mr. Keating” as a charming, unorthodox literature teacher who inspires his students to embrace poetry and breathe life into their exclusive, cold, and stultifying school. The movie hit theaters my first year of high school, and I was enthralled. Part of this, I’m sure, was that I saw myself in the picture—the ensemble of actors was almost exclusively white teenage boys—but it was more the romance of it all, the idea that schooling could be a heroic journey if a charismatic instructor led the way. It remains a really appealing story, and I’m always up for a re-watch.

Unfortunately, here’s where the killjoy in me kicks in. When watching Dead Poets, or other films in the “Single Heroic Teacher” genre, I think it becomes easy to mistake charismatic teaching as synonymous with good teaching. Please don’t get me wrong: An energetic, creative instructor who models passion and implores their charges to higher things can be very effective and a welcome presence in the classroom. But more often than not, I believe, the most remarkable teachers we have are not the ones who supply the greatest pyrotechnics or who dole out the most cool slogans and staccato bursts of energy along the way. They’re instead more likely the professionals who make a thousand small choices and who marshal a thousand unseen gestures that subtly and indirectly—but decidedly and lovingly—help students to recast themselves as learners. Early-morning extra-help sessions, thoughtful and copious and usable feedback on papers and labs and tests, refined learning activities that build upon student questions and student understandings, novel assessments that meet students where they are: These are the kinds of teaching moves that are not the stuff of cinema but which, over time, inexorably transform and empower learners, who may only in retrospect recognize how much they have grown. Powerful teaching is seldom a splashy monologue from an intellectual pied piper; rather, it tends toward intentional and thoughtful ongoing dialogue that gradually helps a student discover both their interests and their capabilities in a world of ideas. 

My point, once more, is not to give static to Dead Poets—a good movie!—or films like it. (I will grouse that not all of the instructional choices by Keating, such as compelling a pathologically shy student to improvise a poem in front of the entire class, seem terrific.) Nor is it to create a false dichotomy between charismatic-but-ephemeral teaching on the one hand and slow, steady, grinding pedagogical devotion on the other; indeed, great teachers perform at a variety of registers over a given year, month, or even class period. But just as there is more to journalism than anonymous sources in parking garages, more to practicing law than withering cross-examinations, the craft of excellent teaching is not all instant classroom epiphany and clever turns of phrase. Inspiration, creativity, and joy should be aims of any meaningful learning community, and while they can be realized through passionate exhortations and outsized moments, they are also assuredly built and encouraged through teaching that is low-key, purposeful, accretive, resilient—and every bit as heroic as what we are shown on the screen.