About Teachers (Beth was a Teacher...)

In honor of Beth's birthday, and since Beth was a teacher, we're going to blog about teachers!

In addition to writing about teachers in context of Beth the former teacher, we're also writing about teaching in the context that public education in the Nation's Capitol sucks!

It -- and crime -- should be the deciding factors in the Mayoral election next month.

I went to a lousy high school (it was kind of like this one, but in the 80s), but I had a spattering of great teachers and that made all the difference.

One, Mr. Clover, my English and Brit Lit teacher, loved his topic and was engaging in every class. He taught me to write (to the extent I can) and to that I owe him my livlihood.

Mrs. Dean was my algebra and geometry teacher and she got me focused on a topic I hated with a white hot passion. Yet she seemed to beleive in me and would kick me in the butt when I didn't do well (which in math...)

Both skills are related somehow...Mr. Clover expected his students to contribute to the conversation. Mrs. Dean had standards. You hated letting either one of them down. They were light years ahead of the teachers (like this one) who stood in front of the class and droned on and on until we all turned into zombies as a defense mechanism.

In college I had a share of profs who had the same skills as my good high school teachers, especially my Constitutional Law Prof. Ira Carmen. I would leave a one hour class of his thinking about what he had said for hours or days.

What are the common denominators here?

• All three were passionate about their subject matter on its own merits
• All three engaged their students
• All three had standards

How do you teach these skills? Can you? Will paying people more to teach make them more like my list of great teachers? How can the system support teachers like this and weed out the ones who are the drones?

I don't know the answers to these questions. Sad thing is, I don't think the mayoral candidates do either.