Teachers' vital mission

By Todd R. Nelson

An experienced school head once exclaimed during a faculty meeting, "I wish we could put a sign out front of the building saying, 'Only a School.' "

I was in the audience. Intended as humor, the lament nonetheless contained an ironic truth. Any group of teachers can sympathize with this exasperation at the pressures to play roles other than educator.

Whether in their third or 33d year, all teachers have experienced the pressure to play several roles simultaneously: scholar, psychologist, disciplinarian, traffic cop, marriage counselor, lawyer, minister, parent, coach, referee, judge, jury, babysitter, sage, bottle washer.

Sometimes we don't even realize the roles we ask them to play. Do most parents know how often teachers lament, "I wish I could just teach"?

But society is not going to allow us that simplicity. As the New Yorker's David Denby once noted, the culture is too busy assuring that its children "are shaped by the media as consumers before they've had a chance to develop their souls."

Our children should not go to the highest bidder! Developing souls takes time, contact, thought, labor, struggle, guidance - teachers. They are the remedy for what ails society. Amid the clamor for accountability and standards, we may be missing the simple eloquence of the teacher-student relationship. Teachers accept an implied call to step in and show wisdom, candor, honesty, and durability when they aren't found elsewhere.

Another school head of my acquaintance liked to remind his faculty of their genius and purpose. "The best schools are places where hearts and minds come together," he told us one August. "Certainly that is the case in this school, for you make it so. It is your responsibility to inspire your students - and you will, you always do, for you are inspired. You are inspired by that foolish, brave old dream of a better world, even as you are haunted by that dark fear of a worse one. So there are moral imperatives in your motives. But you are also lifted up by love and laughter, so that you want to do what you have to do. And it is in you to do it, for you are teachers, and that is the nature of teachers. You are, perhaps, the last idealists, and you still believe in your dreams."

I was inspired, that day as a teacher. I was inspired as a parent to think that someone could give such stirring voice to the responsibility and opportunity that teachers take with my children. And now that I am a school head, I feel charged to ensure that this dream of a better world imbues my school's life.

Despite centuries of innovation, fads, and newfangled "isms," this inspired role has remained substantially unaltered. Teaching is still men and women brave enough to guide nascent intellectuals, artists, athletes, mechanics, computer geeks, and musicians. A school is still, at its heart, its teachers.