Personally, I tend not to connect too deeply with one sentence quotes. They come across to me as pithy and impersonal most of the time. But with that said, one did jump out to me for its connection to a meaningful conversation I had this school year with an excellent teacher in our building, Nilam Yagielski. Nilam and I were discussing student teaching, and how to work with a new teacher who was potentially struggling a bit, as we have both hosted student teachers and have had discussions in this vein before. She said something along the lines of (paraphrasing here), “it is our job to pull the teacher out of them.” We are not just molding them, or remaking ourselves. We are not waiting for a Perfect! person to work with. We are seeing them for who they are and recognizing which parts of themselves add up to being an excellent teacher and reflecting those aspects and qualities of their personality and skill set back at them. With this curated reflection to look at, the mentee can build on their strengths and grow into their best possible teaching self.
This conversation and what it meant to me in hindsight came back to me just now reading through the quotes when I read the quote from Patricia Cross, an education scholar with a long history of work in the U.S. It was number 18 on the list and read, “The tough part is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.” She even throws in an expertly used colon!
This conversation and what it meant to me in hindsight came back to me just now reading through the quotes when I read the quote from Patricia Cross, an education scholar with a long history of work in the U.S. It was number 18 on the list and read, “The tough part is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.” She even throws in an expertly used colon!