Great Teachers Bring the Love

Growing up, my childhood was anything but remarkable — that is until the beginning of my sixth-grade year. My parents had gotten a call from my school’s principal during which, she told them I wasn’t reading at grade level, perhaps I had a learning disability and they wanted to send me back to the fifth grade. Unsettling, to say the least!

To my mother, who had been trained as a teacher, this didn’t make sense. My parents sent me to a psychologist for tests. After two days of playing all sorts of games — the two best days of learning up to that point in my life — he told my parents, “there is nothing wrong with young Jonny. He’s disengaged, bored, shut down and unmotivated. Find another school that will push and challenge him.” Sound familiar?

Thanks to the doggedness of my mother, I landed in that new school in just a matter of weeks. In my very first class, a geography class (which at the time I thought was about rocks) we had to take a test in my first week. I was terrified and even more so when my teacher, Harry Boyadjian, stood in front of my desk the following week with the graded tests in his arms. As he stood in front of my desk, he started shaking his head. “Young Raymond,” he said. “I felt sorry for you because you weren’t even in my class for a week, and you had to take a test — but what a job you did,” as he handed me back my test with a red 73 circled in the upper right-hand corner. “Even you knew where Mesopotamia was!” I think I grew five inches taller that day!

In that moment, the look in his eyes and his hand on my shoulder made me feel like I had gotten a 93. In that instant, he communicated that he believed in me. That I could be something. That maybe I was even smart. In that moment it was like a lightbulb of learning had been turned on for me. I was on my way. Great teachers do this for their students.

Great teachers help their students believe in themselves by first showing that they believe in them. They help their students discover their interests and passions. They do this by giving love.

Years later this notion of “love” was reinforced for me at one of my children’s schools. One of the schools’ leaders was sharing with parents what he believed made this school special. “Our teachers bring four qualities to their craft and profession,” he remarked. “First, they all are really experts in the subjects that they teach. And they are also committed to continuously improving their subject matter knowledge and craft. Third, our teachers are committed to working together to support each other’s growth and to collaborate to support students.” And then his voice grew quieter. “Many teachers have these first three qualities, but what sets our teachers apart from their colleagues is a fourth quality — love. Our teachers here love their students.” Wow — powerful!

Great teachers do love their students. They understand that the work of educating, developing, and nurturing children is both science and art. That relationships are critical, and they must come first. And research supports this too, as Marilyn Cochran-Smith outlines in the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series “Stayers, Leavers, Lovers and Dreamers: Why People Teach and Why they Stay.”

In the paper, Cochran-Smith lifts up Sonia Nieto’s findings from her book “What Keeps Teachers Going?” A central theme of the book is that part of why good urban teachers stay is that they love, believe in, and respect the students they work with.

Great teachers love their students so much they will push and challenge them and never give up on a single one. As one great teacher explained to me, if a student isn’t learning or understanding the material being taught it’s because “I haven’t figured out how to teach to this student. I stick with it, talk with my colleagues, try different approaches until that breakthrough moment.” Amen!

Educators aren’t trained to love their students or even encouraged to think about their craft that way, let alone use the word in their school environments. Let’s do more to recognize great teachers by calling out the love they have for their students and make this four-letter word a more common one.

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