Morrow Point

What We Talk About When We Talk About Teaching

Rebecca Salomonsson

There is a language we speak when we talk about teaching.

Standards, Flipped Classrooms, Metacognition, 

MAP Scores, Growth Mindset, Differentiation,

Learning Targets, Success Criteria, Arts Integration.

That’s what we talk about when we talk about teaching.

So here’s a lesson for the unaware,

A few definitions to help you understand,

All the language, and all the knowledge, we bear.

We talk about classroom management

And consider how to manage when there is

One whose mom kicked her out; 

One who struggles with his identity.

One who is not okay and we don’t know why

One who needs a snack because his stomach is empty;

One who doesn’t think she’ll live to see twenty. 

Classroom management is seeing the whole 

and the individual at once

We talk about Executive Functioning

And wonder how to teach them to

Organize a binder when there is

One whose dad is in jail (or should be)

One whose anxiety kept her up all night

One who cries in the back 

Because someone told him he’s a failure

We wonder how to function when 

Our own child cried herself to sleep last night

But we still have to teach a lesson on proper document formatting 

Double-Spaced, Time New Roman, 12-Point Font

But we know how to do it and do it well because

Executive Functioning is learning to carry on 

when so much is pulling us back

We talk about Differentiation

About how different our students are, 

their strengths, their struggles

The one whose way of greeting us is, “Hi, favorite teacher!” 

The one who’s not in our class anymore, 

but always does a drive-by hug in the hall

We talk about the difference 

between the emails we send and the emails we want to send,

But never will because we are professionals.

Differentiation is knowing our limitations 

and the things we don’t let limit us

We talk about scope and sequence

But we can’t possibly prepare for the scope

of what the year will bring

or the sequence of events that might disrupt our day

For when the one we try to reach slams the door of her heart against us

Or how it will hurt when the one who seeks our guidance all year

Forgets to say goodbye on his last day.

And here’s the last lesson for those who don’t know, 

those who sit in their corner of social media and

say we have an agenda of indoctrination,

Or tell us to stop complaining, get back to work, or quit if we’re unhappy,

And how dare we stand on that picket line anyway?

When we talk about teaching we talk about the sleepy eyes 

That catch the fire of understanding

We talk about the one who says 

“I like Shakespeare now because of you” 

We talk about the one who used to be too shy to talk in class, 

But who just auditioned for the play

The one who used to be too angry to look us in the eye, 

But who now is the one who tells us everything

The one who says we’re the only adult they can talk to

The one who takes pride in his latest reading scores

The ones who keep us coming back to this place, 

Who hold us in this profession and in this life, 

A life that frustrates and exhausts and exhilarates

We talk about the books we’ll write someday, 

the stories we’re collecting, the things we sometimes have to say

“Please don’t lick your desk” 

“Maybe don’t glue your fingers together.”

They, these students, this life – 

That’s what we talk about when we talk about teaching.