INSIGHT ON INSTRUCTION
You Have the Power to be a Life-Changer! Here are some ways you can use that power. students who arrive each day with different emotional needs, and learn at wildly different speeds. Remarkably, life-changing teachers find a way to stay calm amid the chaos and play the long game, giving their students the time and support they need to learn. Life-changing teachers know when to be tough. If life-changing teachers are patient, they also know when to change gears and get tough. They’re the teachers who challenge us to be better students and better humans—and then up the ante and demand that of us. Life-changing teachers believe in their students (and help them believe in themselves). Most of us have had some sort of self-doubt, but many students are crippled by it. Life-changing teachers have the gift of seeing potential in kids when others don’t, and then have the perseverance to help the children find it within themselves. Life-changing teachers love their students. Respondents used the word love a whopping 187 times (and that’s not counting an additional 157 heart emojis). Showing love for students—through small but meaningful gestures of kindness—is far and away the most impactful thing life-changing teachers do.l
“I pretend to pay attention by putting my face in screensaver mode.”
Closing the Digital Divide: It Can Be Done! The Mismatch Continues While very close to half of U.S. K-12 public school students are young people of color, only about 20 percent of teachers are, according to The Education Trust. In addition, in 40 percent of our public schools, there is not a single teacher of color on staff.l
Check out what the city of Oakland, CA has accomplished! At the start of the COVID pandemic, only 12 percent of the city’s low-income students, and 25 percent of all its public school students, had appropriate computer or telephone devices at home and a strong internet connection. Two years later, Oakland has connected 98 percent of its students. As of February, the city had provided nearly 36,000 laptops and more than 11,500 hot spots to low-income students. “We were using the crisis as an opportunity to address a moral wrong that needs to be changed forever, not just during the pandemic,” says Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “We can’t afford not to.” To learn more about how this was done, visit oaklandundivided.org/.l Source: The Hechinger Report
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VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022
VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022
Photos by iStock
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hen people reminisce about their days in school, the talk doesn’t often turn to the tests they took, or the curriculum and standards set by the state—it usually goes back to teachers they had. So, Betty Ray, a former staffer at education nonprofit Edutopia and founder of the Center for Ritual Design, decided to find out what made certain teachers become life-changers. She asked Edutopia’s Facebook community, and these are the top answers she got back from the over 700 respondents, courtesy of Edutopia: Life-changing teachers make their students feel safe. The research is unequivocal: People can’t learn if they’re anxious, frightened, or in trauma. Safety is part of the education starter kit. Unsurprisingly, many recalled that the best teachers establish a culture of safety and support in their classrooms, whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual. Life-changing teachers possess a contagious passion. A passion for education is in the blood of the best teachers and the best teachers pass it on to students. Life-changing teachers model patience. Learning can be slow and messy. Classrooms are filled with
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