Is there such a thing as the perfect lesson or the perfect teacher? Well, no, probably not; at least, not that I’m aware of. There is no silver bullet that can turn us into amazing teachers overnight; being outstanding is not, I think, a matter of charismatic delivery. It’s about hard work and effort. It’s about thorough planning based on sound assessment for learning. And it’s about consistently being there and having high expectations of and belief in the kids in front of you.
Christine Osae
Like me, you’ve probably taught some shoddy lessons along the way of which you were immediately and rightly ashamed. The temptation is to nail these horrors into lead-lined coffins and bury them in twisted graveyards of memory, but there’s gold in them. I’ve certainly had my share of failures. I’d like to think that these failures have all impacted positively on the students I teach. Maybe not straightway, but with determined reflection and a relentless pursuit of perfection I have always been determined to be my best.
It is my firm and unswerving belief that every teacher can be outstanding, but perfection may not be possible. Until they replace us with bioengineered robo-pedagogues, we need to remember that it is striving to be our best which marks us out as the outstanding teachers our students deserve. The fact is that the desire for perfection is deadly. It can kill your joy, kill your job satisfaction, and kill your productivity because it is simply unattainable. Every success I have had was not built on a foundation of perfect, but a foundation of iteration. The process is messy, crooked, bumpy and unknown.
What does perfection look like for our students? If we are planning and executing our lessons with "perfect” in mind, where do the students fit into the equation? There is no perfect, when working with humans, especially young ones. We are unpredictable creatures. Zoom out and see who the focus of the "perfect” lesson is. Is it us or those we teach? We very well could execute the perfect lesson, in our mind, but what about the students? Is it the perfect lesson for them? Nothing is received or interpreted the same. We must plan to meet our students, not the other way around.
If perfect is the goal, think about all of the other goals that fall by the waist side. We need to prepare our students for a future that is unknown. To me, that is the opposite of "perfect”. We need to be models for our students on how to think critically, how to turn on a dime when there is a hiccup, a mistake, a fail, or how to run with something that works, that was not a part of the plan. Students need to learn how to look at all perspectives, to plan, risk-try, fail (yes fail), rethink, redo and repeat. We need them to not crumble or freeze when they are thrown a plot twist that does not fit into perfect because there is more than one way to solve a problem; definitely more than one path to get to a destination. That is what makes learning beautiful!
So, try to put your perfection aside. Look up and look around at what is happening while you are planning perfection. Life, and especially, education is changing so quickly. As soon as we think we have something "mastered”; it changes and you should be able to change with it. Change is inevitable — the only constant thing. If we want to impact massively on our students and maximise their abilities, we must disregard perfection.