Introduction
Photo credit: TWB member Fenel Pierre (Haiti)
The world can feel like a cesspool, but it’s filled with generous people.
Some of the most generous of all, the ones who carry the world on their shoulders, teach. On a global scale, they are nothing short of a development army. They have always been there. We just might not have been paying attention.
When I ask teacher changemakers what drives them to serve their communities so profoundly, some look at me as if I were an airport security agent noticing their mismatched socks. Most appreciate the gesture but say they have not done enough to make a difference.
Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start with the basics. I once asked a bigwig at the United Nations to define the word “teacher.” Without skipping a beat, he responded, “A teacher is anyone with valuable information to share.” The simplicity of this statement belies an underlying elegance and depth. Anyone also includes those without formal training, but who nonetheless teach what they know. Coaches, parents, preachers and village elders come immediately to mind. There are so many more. Valuable is less a commodity, precious and high-priced, than a service, beneficial and productive. The two words, valuable information, are dance partners. In a world of fake news, information is not valuable until it’s verifiable. Sharing demands a conversation and reciprocity, not a broadcast. Sharing valuable information is the soul of teaching.
I often ask my graduate students to describe teachers from their formative years. We make a list: charismatic, hippie, fresh-faced, cool, creepy, apathetic, boring, subversive teachers. A student practicing his English blurted out, “Preternatural paragons of patience!” Reluctant authoritarians. Risk-takers. Magicians. Stand-and-deliver and follow-your-dreams teachers.
We knead in the movie versions and the messages these films communicate: a wide range from incompetent to inspirational. Still, it doesn’t move the needle toward anything we can use.
Someone invariably raises the question about whether teachers are born or made. I ask them to take sides and argue it out. It usually ends in a draw, like an unanswerable Zen koan. I, for one, shudder at the prospect of an education school admissions test that distinguishes a born prospect from a “project.” I’ve tried inviting Alexa and Siri to class and asking them to shed light on this born/made conundrum. Both digital assistants spit back anemic answers.
Why not dispense with the variability and fallibility of the human factor and ask a different question, like can we manufacture teachers? Think iPads attached to Roombas roaming around the classroom sponging up data and offering help, drones measuring facial expressions, or the deluxe version of an all-in-one, teacher-tutor-grader app. DNA test-kit companies like 23andMe can “decipher the human genome” to reveal monumental health indicators such as Type 2 diabetes and skin cancer, not to mention asparagus odor detection, back hair, glossophobia (fear of public speaking, though I would hazard a guess that few teachers carry this) and misophonia (hatred of the sound of chewing, probably running through a majority of the teaching corps). Might these companies produce a breakthrough in utero service that identifies an “urge-to-teach” trait? Time will tell.
I have devoted the past 23 years of my 44-year career to a different inquiry: the sweet spot when a community’s urgency meets teachers’ agency. I’m interested in living, breathing teachers who show up.
This book is about teachers who show up at the right time, often at the wrong place, with valuable information to share. They show up for 60 children crowded into Quonset huts without desks, books or water. They show up in odd places to collect discarded bicycle parts, toys and plastic bottles to demonstrate a concept. Teachers without classrooms or even a school, who show up to gather students under a tree or in a cave to scratch out addition and subtraction exercises in the dirt.
I want to introduce you to teachers who prepare and plan for disasters and who, in a crisis, establish child-friendly spaces that foster a sense of normalcy amid all that chaos and horror, and reunite families when an earthquake decimates their schools or a once-in-a-century flood ravages their crops and washes their homes away. Teachers who show up to educate children about how to minimize the likelihood of catching a deadly virus even when conspiracy theorists scream that it’s all a hoax. Who bolster civility in an era when the civility underlying our social contract is under siege. Who explore challenging subjects despite book bans and prohibited topics. Who shelter children from school shooters or ideological mercenaries bent on ransacking classrooms and trafficking children. Teachers who show up even when the very act of teaching is against the law.
Teachers are changemakers in our backyards. They don’t need Hallmark cards, a PR firm or more bake sales, though funding for education on a global scale is paltry at best. They can do without the corporate-sponsored awards ceremony or, God forbid, teacher talent shows. Teachers deserve their voices heard, a seat at Davos, at the G8 summit and in the General Assembly of the United Nations.
When that day comes, we will have shown up for them.
