Perfection Is The Enemy of the Good Enough

Not every teacher is awesome, and not every awesome teacher is awesome all the time.  Every student is entitled to a competent teacher, not to a Superteacher:

Public debates about teaching often raise some version of this question: How do we figure out what great teachers do differently and then get other teachers to do it?

The why-can’t-every-teacher-be-more-like-this refrain has long been popular. Media stories about the Next Big Edu-Thing begin by presenting the educator who embodies the new trend, whose rapt students lean forward in their seats, or chatter with purpose in self-directed, project-based learning groups, or interact glitchlessly with their school’s new blended-lesson tech tools. Focusing on great teachers seems to be a win for everyone — certainly, it’s less fraught than having to debate what makes a bad teacher...

Some days they’ll have moments of greatness. Every once in a while, like anyone at any job, they just won’t bring their best selves to work. But most of the time, they’ll be persistently, unremarkably good. Might that be enough?

...The focus on great teachers can also implicitly suggest that educators shouldn’t need luxuries like administrators who handle schoolwide discipline, or advance warning before major changes in policy or curriculum, or enough desks. This is not an expectation we bring to our assessment of other professions; we would never applaud the example of, say, a no-excuses firefighter who doesn’t need appropriate firefighting equipment. (Or starts a Go Fund Me page to buy that needed equipment.)

...My hope was to capture teachers not as heroes, but as what they are: a diverse group of sometimes heroic, often flawed, and occasionally hilarious humans doing a complex job that no one ever fully masters.

These are the teachers who make up the majority of our teaching workforce. They have commitments outside of school and bills to pay. They, and we, stand to benefit from making sure teaching is a sustainable career.

Hear hear.