The most sophisticated aptitude test can predict little about teaching effectiveness, but this capability becomes immediately clear when the teacher actually becomes exposed to students and interacts with them. While getting to know students is crucial for teaching effectiveness, alert teachers learn far more about themselves by exposure to students. They have a way of revealing to a teacher what kind of a person the teacher actually is.

I first noticed this in my own experience, and then observed the same thing in teaching colleagues and finally in the teachers I supervised. I have seen it in those who had taught our three children, and I continue to see it in our grandchildren’s teachers.

I observe it in the two of our children who became teachers (one in high school and the other in college). Their mother and I, I feel, knew them sufficiently well to know that they would be the good teachers they have, in fact, become.

I recall fondly the phone call I received in the middle of a night when one asked: &uot;Dad, do you think I would be a good teacher?&uot; The fact of the matter is that I hadn’t thought much about it, because he hadn’t talked about it at all. With only a brief reflection on what I knew about him, I said emphatically: &uot;Yes, you would be. You would be a splendid teacher.&uot; I had this confidence because I had a reasonably good idea of the person he was then and could project to the kind of teacher he would become. In point of fact, I suspect his mother and I had a fuller perspective than he did at that moment of toying with the idea. He is now this, even beyond what I could have imagined.

One of the many rewards of being a teacher is that students have a way of bringing out of teachers what has been there without the teacher being especially aware of it. For good and for bad.

This is to say, what is actually brought out of the teacher by students runs the gambit from the very worst to the very best. Some individuals discover a dark, ugly element within themselves they never knew. If the teacher is a hateful person, even though most people would not have so described the individual, the teacher will hate students in a way he or she could never have imagined hating anyone. If the teacher is fearful, the individual will fear no one quite so much as students.

Happily, most such persons quickly drop out of teaching. Less frequently are they dropped from teaching, and there is no hell on earth quite like the consequences of an entrenched ineffective teacher.

If the teacher is a loving person, even though felt not more than most, the teacher will love students with a warmth beyond what could have been imagined. If the teacher is kind, no kindness is more rewarding than that shown to students. I rejoice in the many times I have seen a teacher experience students drawing out of him or her love and kindness even they didn’t know was there. Teachers often surprise themselves as to how effective they can be in teaching and how fulfilling this is.

I think there are two major things I learned about myself in early teaching experience. One is that I can love unlovable persons. The other is how hard I had to work at being gentle with fragile children. When I found myself loving unlovable children, I discovered a dimension of my love I hadn’t known. When I became gentle with young children, I learned that toughness and gentleness partner.

One of the very great rewards of teaching is getting to know yourself.

Dr. Wallace Alcorn’s commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.