Pushing the Pencil

From the essays

Teachers must learn how to push the pencil, effecting ease and simplicity out of hard learning that leaves a deep and permanent impression upon youthful thought. Having high expectations is laudable but woefully inadequate for overcoming the disparities that lurk in the deep recesses of our broad domain.

More teaching, whether good or bad, is lost somewhere between class and lunch than could ever be recovered from one year to the next. The best lessons taught end up at the dinner table, not at the end of the period.

That teaching is as much an addiction as it is a profession need not be elaborately urged. Teachers though born must nevertheless be made and remade. Schools do not improve teaching; teaching improves schools.