A Teacher or an Educator?

I hope that I am an educator and not a teacher.

Let me go back a few steps.  This past week I watched a very good friend of mine give her first TEDx talk on her experiences throwing out grades (and she rocked it!). This event also featured several student speakers.  All the students were fantastic – well spoken, poised and passionate in their delivery. They had a lot of great things to say but two of those things stood out for me.  One student talked about the experiences of students working hard to create projects that only the teacher sees.  This has sparked in me a tiny revolution but I am going to go into that further in another post.  This post focuses on the talk of a young man named Timmy, a senior in high school, who counted off the number of teachers he’d had over the years that he considered educators and not just teachers. As he went on to elaborate about what made a teacher an educator, I just kept thinking, “I wonder if he would call me an educator and not a teacher”.

What makes someone an educator as opposed to a teacher?  A few days out from the talk the details of what he said are starting to get a little fuzzy but here is what I remember (and have maybe filled in with some of my own ideas).  Educators are teachers that go the extra mile.  They may be wildly passionate about their subject and impart that passion on their students.  Educators may also be a maternal or paternal figure in the lives of their students, showing their students that they care about what they have to say and what is going on in their lives. Teachers, however, share what they know with their students but never quite make that special connection. I am a teacher, and I think, a pretty good one.  But that’s not enough.  I want to be an educator.

When I think back on my schooling, there are several teachers that I can point to and say that he or she made a lasting impression on me, several teachers that I can call an educator.  So (many years later) here is a thank you to those educators in my life:

·      Ms. Chin, my second grade teacher that took us to Chinatown on Chinese New Year

·      Ms. Neiman, my first grade teacher that helped me to find a job when I was in high school

·      Mr. Tannenbaum, my elementary school science teacher who taught me to love science

·      Mr. Ellel, who, through the magic of Facebook, I still (sort of) keep in touch with, and who helped me to realize I could actually do math when I was in middle school

·      Mr. Kreisman, the middle school French teacher that I will never forget

·      Ms. Stutman, the high school English teacher that would have passionate conversations with me about The Scarlet Letter

I was fortunate and had many good teachers, but a few really stand out because of the academic or personal impact they made on my life.  They are the educators in my life. A million thank yous for helping me to become the woman I am today.

Over the 12 years I have been teaching, hundreds and hundreds of students have come through my doors. Many years from now, if even a small percentage of them look back on their time in school and name me as one of the educators in their lives, then I have truly done my job.