Best Teachers Are Creative, Focused
In the classrooms of some of the Inland Northwest’s most creative elementary teachers, students fingerpaint with fruit, study under a colored-paper rainforest or enter an imaginary wolf’s den at the classroom door.
Other teachers, in the upper grades, are bound to the demands of a more rigorous curriculum. But they express their creativity through the authentic rapport they establish, the humor in which they wrap their lessons and the passion with which they bring ancient words alive.
In today’s IN Life section, the newspaper’s Creative ‘98 series centers around the work of a few of this region’s most inspired teachers. When The Spokesman-Review sent out a call for creative people to profile, the response was top-heavy with educators. More great teachers were nominated than could possibly be described in these pages.
Now as fall settles in and schools throughout the area hum with churning brain cells, it’s time to take a moment to appreciate teachers. Author Jacques Barzun once said, “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”
Let’s regain this lost tradition in the Inland Northwest, where schools may occasionally struggle to pass bond issues but still maintain a wealth of fine teachers.
These professionals, spread thin by the demands of days too short and class rosters too long, remain engaged and inspired. They deserve the community’s high regard.
This is a good week to write a long overdue thank-you letter to a teacher. A single teacher’s words can reverberate through an entire life. It’s never too late to express gratitude.
Teachers need the respect and support of open-minded parents. Education succeeds best when parents are partners, not adversaries. Teachers also need the diligent effort of administrators to keep resources high and class sizes low.
As this region’s schools tackle education reform and the requirements of new state assessment tests, there may be new fears surrounding the classroom. There is the risk that these teachers’ imaginative freedom could be unnecessarily diminished.
Our best hope is that schools, like artists, will discover that it is the combination of inventive spirit and disciplined purpose that creates the most enduring work.
A Spokane social studies teacher recently spoke to parents at an evening open house. He described, with a seasoned teacher’s wisdom, the junior high student’s search for identity. “Soon,” he said, “your children will be able to tell you who they are.”
It is teachers like him, and like those on these pages, who hold open crucial doors to those unfolding selves every single day.