I learned recently that the month of January was named after the ancient Roman god Janus, the god of new beginnings.  When you see a picture of Janus, he has two faces.  One face looks backwards, while the other one looks forward.  This year, I am aiming to finish my coursework to earn my Master’s degree and teaching certification.  However, looking backwards, I think about my journey to becoming a teacher and have wrestled with this question for a while, “Can good students become good teachers?”

As someone who loved going to school and learning about a number of diverse topics like architecture, biology and logic, I think about some strengths I can draw on as I become a teacher:

1. Test Taking:  As a student, I scored high enough on standardized testing to get a National Merit scholarship.  Scoring high on tests and getting good grades opened a lot of doors for me.  I got scholarships to attend college for free, but ultimately chose to go to a private college.  Even after college, I took standardized tests to get into graduate school.  As a young investment banker, I took exams called Series 7 and Series 63 to become a certified broker.  Now, as an aspiring teacher, I’ve taken a battery of different standardized tests required to obtain a teaching credential.  Aside from taking the California Subject Matter Competence tests, I’ve taken a Reading Instruction Competency test (RICA) and later this year, I will need to pass a test about the U.S. Constitution.  Over years of practice, I’m comfortable under time pressure and have built up the stamina to answer hundreds of multiple choice questions and answer short responses.
2. Life-long Learning:  I’m pursuing my second Master’s degree, and I thought I would be done with classes after this program.  However, I discovered that upon graduating from my Master’s program, my quarterly course units would not translate to full semester units, which is relevant in determining what salary a teacher will earn.  The 59 quarterly course units translates to 39 semester units and on most public teacher salary schedules, this will land you in the first and lowest salary column.  In fact, on some schedules, the salary tops off after 10 years, meaning that if you are a teacher in column A, there is no salary advancement beyond 10 years, aside from a customary cost-of-living adjustment.  So, how do teachers move across to the highest salary column?  By taking more classes!
3. Executive Function Skills: I didn’t learn this term until I was an adult and had assumed these were professional skills honed by corporate executives.  However, in studying cognitive behavior, I realized that this is actually a term from child development!  According to the Center for Child Development at Harvard, executive function skills include the “capacity to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions, among others.”  I am currently student-teaching at a local elementary school in the mornings, and I take graduate classes three nights a week, so I rely on my abilities to plan and tackle tasks to make sure I’m meeting the goals I’ve set for myself.

What worries me is that as a former “good student”, I might have some blind spots that I might come across as a teacher:

1. Helping struggling students: As a good student, most concepts came to me easily in school.  But, I often wonder how many different ways I can explain a particular concept to someone who is confused.  What might seem obvious to me might be obtuse to another.  Is my student not understanding due to a language issue or content issue?  As a teacher, I need to brainstorm multiple ways students can interpret a problem and solve it.  Instead of finding one solution path, I need to challenge myself to find a couple solution paths so I can anticipate the questions my students might have.  A key component of lesson planning is anticipating any misconceptions students might have about the area you are about to teach, and try to meet those head-on.  After all, preventing the misconception is better than trying to reverse it.
2. Imposter syndrome: Many students look up to their teachers as “know-it-alls,” but the more I study different fields, the more I realize I don’t know.  It’s a paradox of education that happens when a deeper understanding of a subject opens new avenues for inquiry.  I’ve asked myself “How can I assume an omniscient teacher personna?”  Professor of Education, Alison King, wrote a very interesting paper called, “From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side,” in which she argues that rather than seeing the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge from the teacher, the classroom should be an environment where students lead their own journeys of learning, while teachers help facilitate this as “guides on the side.”  With the ability to “Google” most answers these days, it seems much less important now for students to memorize information than it is to be able to synthesize and transform information into a deeper understanding.   

I don’t think that good students automatically turn into good teachers, but I do believe my experience as a good student provides a unique perspective in teaching.  Too often, I see teachers asking early finishers in the classroom to read quietly until the rest of the class finishes their work.  I think this pattern of behavior is demotivating for students doing well in class.  While the majority of the class wrestles and engages with the coursework, teachers often miss out on the opportunity to extend learning for students who have already mastered the subject.  A natural consequence of this is counter-intuitive: the students who are ahead become disengaged with school.