Chapter 19:
In the summer of 2005, I was given one of the greatest gifts of my teaching career. It was a question.
“What is it that makes a truly great teacher?”
I was not expecting the question, and I vividly remember mentally reaching back into my experience as a student, identifying a teacher, and suddenly realizing the answer.
A great teacher may be an expert in content, but what makes a teacher truly great actually has very little to do with content. A truly great teacher causes you to see something amazing and important about yourself that you didn’t even realize existed. He or she causes something within you to awaken. The teacher’s belief in you causes you to believe in yourself. Suddenly you feel more capable and more powerful. Your very self-context expands in a way that you never imagined possible.
That question continues to challenge me as an educator. It causes me to wonder what impact I am having on my students. When I prepare lessons, I ask: Is my intention simply to teach students layer upon layer of content or am I striving to help them reach for and discover their boundless potential?
I never want my lessons to be about the content. I want my lessons to be all about the students who are learning the content. It is all about the students.
With that student-focused intention in mind, I posted the next Big Idea on the wall:
“You are amazing learners. You have already become very good at many, many things. And there is so much more you want to learn. You can wait for me to give you ideas about what you can learn, or you can start by thinking about this: What are some things that you are already very good at? Maybe you are really good at helping others learn. That is a powerful strength because it helps you learn, too. Maybe you have become a very focused writer. That is another powerful strength because it helps you think.
“Now, I want you to think about something else. There may be something amazing about yourself, a strength you haven’t even discovered yet.
I want you to consider that for a moment…
“The truth is, there may be many, many strengths you haven’t discovered yet. Just as you are discovering powerful, important questions, you may come to realize that you have some amazing, extraordinary strengths that you aren’t even aware of yet. I want you to consider your strengths — both the ones that you know about now, and the ones that you are going to discover as you travel through your learning journey.
“Over the next weeks and months, I may be teaching a lesson that is focused on social studies, or science, or reading, or writing, but you may learn something far beyond what I am teaching. You may learn something very powerful about yourself as a learner. Yes, I want you to learn the ideas that I am teaching, but I want you to keep an additional layer of learning in mind; I want you to consider your strengths. I want you to notice them. I want you to watch them grow. You are an amazing learner, and I want you to pay attention to what happens as you learn. You may learn something that is far more important than whatever I had planned on that day. So as we travel through our lessons together, I want you to do this: I want you to continually consider your strengths.”
It is very interesting to note that when many people are asked to consider their strengths, they quickly contrast what they feel they are good at with those things they consider to be their weaknesses. When we consider our strengths, we very often simultaneously consider our weaknesses.
Additionally, many people assume that strengths and weaknesses are static. Some even come to the erroneous conclusion that it is impossible to improve in certain areas of their lives.
Big Idea 19 has nothing to do with weaknesses, and it has nothing to do with the false concept that strengths are fixed or static. It has everything to do with paying attention to your growth and watching what happens to your strengths as you permit yourself to question, to struggle, to succeed, to fail, and to reflect. With every experience we can all grow as learners, especially if we are hungry to recognize the impact of those experiences.
I do not expect my students to think of their strengths as something that could be identified during a one-time inventory. I expect them to daily consider their strengths and to fully anticipate that their strengths will grow and change as they do. By paying attention to how their strengths continue to evolve, they will recognize that they are learners — powerful learners — who can choose to pursue an enormous array of strengths and possibilities.
Notice that no part of this message communicates that students are destined to live within a limited range of strengths. The entire point is to encourage students to constantly notice how their strengths grow as they learn and to recognize that they are continually growing as powerful learners who can engage in struggle. Learning is not easy. It is usually messy, frequently difficult, often frustrating, and at the very same time it is empowering and exciting.
As students travel through the process, their awareness of their growing strengths empowers them to keep learning more about learning itself. They will understand that very often wrestling, struggling, and contending with ideas is at the heart of learning. One of the greatest strengths they can develop is the willingness to enter into risky territory and to grapple with new concepts.
The students’ journeys, whether filled with successes or failures — or, more likely, filled with some of both — will feature a growing array of strengths. Among the many strengths within that array may be some strengths that were entirely unexpected by the students. They may discover something new, something that they did not even realize ever existed. As I struggle to improve as a teacher, I want my students to frequently and deeply consider their strengths.
When I read the words, “Consider Your Strengths” on the wall of my classroom, two concepts quickly come to mind. The first one is about my current strengths. I wonder if any of my strengths can be advantageous to my students. If so, I want to maximize and leverage those strengths to the best of my ability for the benefit of my students. The second concept is one that propels me forward. “Consider my strengths” makes me wonder what strengths I can discover within myself. I am certain that, exactly like my students, if I pay close attention to my personal learning journey, I will continue to see growth. Paying attention to that growth encourages me and helps me recognize the growth that comes when I willingly struggle with new concepts. My growth may be slow, or it may be rapid, but the willingness to consider my strengths — both those I see now and the ones I want to see in the future — and to enter into the struggle to grow is the key.
Within that struggle, I can encounter an important question: How can I turn a current risk into a future strength? How can I grow into a strength that feels like it is out of reach and then go on to stand on that new strength to reach for even more growth.
I am constantly considering my strengths, and I find that it helps me locate opportunities to take growth risks. When I take those risks, I grow. And that is exactly what I want my students to do.
