At this week’s staff meeting I shared with teachers the following reflection by John Steinbeck – the author of wonderful novels such as The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck’s comments powerfully capture the essence of good teaching. The sentence which resonated with me the most was: ‘They all loved what they were doing.’

My eleven-year-old son came to me recently and in a tone of patient suffering, asked, “How much longer do I have to go to school?” 

"About five years," I said.

"Oh! Lord," he said despondently. "Do I have to?"

"I’m afraid so. But I can tell you this – if you are very lucky, you may find a teacher and that is a wonderful thing."

"Did you find one?"

"I found three," I said.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

My three had these things in common – They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell – they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.

I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery.

She aroused us to shouting, book-waving discussions. We could never stick to the subject, geometry or the chanted recitation of the memorised phyla. Our speculation ranged the world. She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths shielded in our hands like captured fireflies. She left a passion in us for the pure knowable world and me she inflamed with a curiosity which has never left me. I could not do simple arithmetic but through her I sensed that abstract mathematics was very like music. When she left, a sadness came over us but the light did not go out. She left her signature on us, the literature of the teacher who writes on minds. I have had many teachers who told me soon-forgotten facts but only three who created in me a new thing, a new attitude and a new hunger. I suppose that to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of that high school teacher. What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach