What does a good mentor do?
It gets you to be a reflective teacher by asking yourself relevant questions on a daily basis.
Among the many things a mentor can do, inspiring you to become the best possible teacher you can be, for me, is among the most important.
In addition to seeing my fellow teachers as mentors and trying to find out what I can learn from those at my school and meet in trainings, I also find inspiration and enlightenment from those "teachers" who are no longer living, but still very much alive inside of my heart and head.
They keep me on track and fill my head with new ideas, help keep my head up when things get tough, and fill my heart with courageous energy to take my students' potential and work with them to turn it into their ongoing and unlimited reality.
These are probably the top six that I find myself using every week.
Socrates
470 BCE - 399 BCE
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
Am I doing nothing more than temporarily filling their neurons with knowledge for a test, or am I helping them making connections between those neurons, setting fire to their synapses as the electrical charges build a powerful, neural network that will be alive and on fire forever?
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
Do my students hear me saying, "Teachers don't tell you what to think, they get you to think?"
"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom."
How often are my students filled with wonder about the content I'm teaching?
How passionate and hungry are they to learn it?
Am I helping them return to the time when they were natural scientists, wondering about everything and discovering answers through experience, before they came to school and were told to be quiet, sit still, and know this stuff for a test?
Plato
428 BCE - 348 BCE
“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
Do I find myself frustrated and feeling tense because, without realizing it, I'm trying to get caught up and trying to force learning down their throats?
Have I stopped to ask myself why each one of my students might want to learn what I'm trying to teach?
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
Am I listening to this wisdom that's been around for @2,500 years, or am I falling back on how I was taught 20-40 years ago?
Am I becoming smart enough to figure out how to integrate as much play into my teaching as possible in the form of pre-assessments, helping students interact with new knowledge through direct instruction, formative assessments, practicing and deepening knowledge, and helping students generate and test hypotheses?
“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
How effectively am I really encouraging my students with clear and appropriate learning targets, motivating scales that reward them for partial progress along the way, and instruction that makes clear the critical information?
Aristotle
384 BCE - 322 BCE
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Are my students in my heart as well as in my classroom? Can they feel that I believe in them and am willing to work with them to "love" their potential into existence?
"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Are my students able to understand what they're learning well enough to show what they know by teaching it to others?
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end to human existence."
Are my students happy? Am I? Are we having a good time together?
"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."
Are my students involved in the lesson by playing with the new knowledge and creating artifacts and evidence of knowledge mastery and ability?
"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives."
Am I making sure they can prove their answers on a test? How often am I asking them how they know what they know? Am I really emulating the motto of London's Royal Society of knowledge, Nullius in Verba, not taking my word for it, but seeing it for themselves.
If this was good enough for King Charles II, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton, it's certainly good enough for my students too.
Thomas Edison
1847 CE - 1931 CE
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
How many times am I willing to continuing trying, no matter how many times I may continue failing, until I succeed in turning on the light inside of every one of my students?
"Five percent of people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
Are 100% of my students really thinking? Am I? Are we spending rigorous time generating and testing hypotheses?
“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
Do I believe this to be truth? Am I getting my students to believe this truth about themselves by helping them succeed beyond anything they've ever done or believed they could do?
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
Am I getting my students to never give up on themselves by never giving up on them?
Albert Einstein
1879 CE - 1955 CE
Am I differentiating my instruction to my student's unique particular talents, letting a fish excel as a fish, a squirrel excel as a squirrel, and a bird excel as a bird?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Knowledge is the start, but am I requiring my students to do anything with it? It's important to know how to ride a bike, but more important to be able to ride a bike. What new knowledge and ability am I asking my students to create with it via their imaginations.
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Am I encouraging courage and confidence in my students by telling them, "If you're not making new mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. If you're making the same mistakes over and over, you're not trying hard enough"?
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
Unfortunately, most great thinkers hated their formal education, Leonardo Da Vinci included. Fortunately, they became wanted to really think and learn so much that they learned how to teach themselves and became the self-learners we strive so hard to instill in our students today.
Am I making sure that my instruction is not interfering with my students real and long-lasting learning?
Am I getting them to act as quantum scientists, becoming self-learners through the play and display of their own potentiality?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929 CE - 1968 CE
Am I spending enough time in the deepening and practicing and generating and testing hypotheses phases that allow my students to think critically?
Am I also monitoring their intra and interpersonal intelligence on how well they know and control themselves and how well they know and seek to understand others?
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
When my students fail, do I share this wisdom with them? Do I tell them that they are literally writing the amazing story of their own lives by never giving up, never giving in, in rising each time they fall and are afraid?
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
MLK had a big, beautiful, powerful dream. He didn't have a weak wish or half-hearted hope that one day his four little children would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
Is my dream of what could happen with my students just as big, beautiful and powerful?
Do I dream big, do big and become big in every cell of my body for every one of my students?
Robin Williams
1951 CE - 2014 CE
Robin Williams' performance in Dead Poets Society was what made me want to become a teacher. I had been in business for 10 years and no matter how well I did I was bored and wondered what I was doing with my life.
I wrote to him and thanked him for inspiring me and helping me find a job I would do for free (my mother's advice to me when I went to college).
I asked him if he could send a picture to my class with an inspirational message. He sent back a signed picture with the words, "To Mr. Stuart's class, Dream Big!"
From that I made my class motto, "Dream Big, Do Big, Be Big!"
I want to dedicate these blogs to the man that inspired me to spend the rest of my life trying to inspire others. Thank you Robin, you live on in my heart and head and classroom every day.
The picture is in my classroom and I'll include it on Monday's post.
Day 6 of Teach Thought ~ Think Better 30 Day Blogging Challenge
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