Oh, the hardest part is jumping off the board...

This entry is excerpted from, "Eight Lessons Becoming the Great Teacher You Already Are":

3. It’s not the dive that gets you, it’s the diving board.

Years ago, I was watching the Olympic high diving finals. One diver launched himself into the air and twisted, turned, and somersaulted in an incredible series of mid-air gyrations before settling into the water like it was butter. Not a ripple. Afterward, in an interview, he was asked to comment on what he thought was the hardest element in his long, complex, dangerous dive. Without hesitation he said, “Oh, the hardest part is jumping off the board.”

Students notice when you dare to jump off the board. They know the difference between “live” teaching and teaching that feels distinctly like it was “recorded at an earlier time.” Students know when you are present and engaged, willing to take on the unexpected; they also know when you have checked out and when you are playing it safe. What makes great teaching scary is leaping off into space and not being sure that things will fall (or you will fall) quite the way you hoped.

I believe that is why there is an element of courage in the finest teaching, a required particle of risk, an earnest hope that you will be able to execute everything you need to do to reach the end of class effectively, arrive at your goals successfully, and exit the classroom in one pedagogical piece. An instinctive awareness of this risk-taking is reflected in the tiny flicker of apprehension that often accompanies the most experienced (and, often, the best) teachers on the first day of a new class.

This nervousness is a gut recognition that, if we want to do well, we will probably have to take a chance, and that we will have to make the running leap we have made so often before. Of course, this sense of risk is accompanied and heightened by our memories of the belly flops and unintentional cannonballs in the past. But once we are in the air, if we know what we are doing and luck is on our side, for a minute or two we fly—and it is our courage that enables our flight.

Boy. Isn't that the truth!? As I can say, I've officially taught for 20 weeks (including observation and the sweat-producing act of teaching), I have been noticing that basically ANYONE can be a teacher.

However, it takes a little more gusto, nerve of steel, gall, vigor... to be THE teacher. Kiss a worksheet goodbye, and find yourself asking your students to pull out a blank notebook, and trying to juice up a discussion according to Bloom's Taxonomy.

Easy?

Try doing that with seventeen 11 and 12 years olds.

They seemed to lose their vocal chords, despite the fact that they HAD it when they were putting their winter wear away in the coatroom, rather loudly.

"OK, students, please think of ways you can continue the discussion between yourself and your peer, I want you to continue the discussion and keep it engaging."

*distant thudding* You can HEAR their vocal cords dropping down to their stomachs. Not willing to participate.

Oh, the hardest part is jumping off the board.... to make the students think critically, applying the 21st century style.