Teaching as _____ (art, science, business or craft)

Or is it all of the above?

Welcome! I'm Lauren Brown and this is my newsletter on education issues that impact all of us— parents, educators & concerned citizens. Today’s post was inspired by other Substack writers and 20 plus years in the classroom.

Yesterday, education writer

Holly Korbey

put out an open thread on her Substack,

The Bell Ringer

, asking teachers to share what they learned (or didn’t learn) in their training. The comment I read from

Danny Scuderi

struck a chord. You should read it for yourself, because I won’t do it justice.¹ He spoke to the things one learns best by actually doing the work of teaching; by being “in the trenches,” though thankfully, he didn’t use those exact words.

I’m thankful because I loath that metaphor. It turns what happens in school as a battle between students and teachers.

There are many other metaphors that describe the profession of teaching, and I love a good metaphor as well as the next English teacher, even though I’m actually a history teacher.

As I read Danny Scuderi’s comments and thought about how to respond in the comments, I thought about the first assignment I completed in my methods class in college. (If you’re not a teacher: that’s the class you typically take while you are also doing observations in classroom, the semester before student teaching).

We were tasked with comparing the role of teacher to another job or profession, ideally one we had actually experienced. The comparison I chose was waiting tables. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but anyone who has ever waited tables at a popular restaurant that’s being slammed at brunch knows the craziness that happens when 2 six-tops are seated at virtually the same time and they all want their coffee (one decaf) and they need a high chair ASAP and back of house is yelling at you because the omelettes for table 7 are getting cold and table 5 needs their check and the kid at table 4 just spilled orange juice everywhere.

This analogy explains a lot about my first year of teaching. I felt pulled in a million directions and was trying to please everybody. I was very...customer-focused. The metaphor? Teaching as business.

Another student in my class compared teaching to being a salesperson that is selling something that people don’t want. He wondered, how do we (the teachers) convince our customers (the students) to buy the product (education) that we are selling? More teaching as business.

I remember thinking the class was getting off to a rather depressing start but then perked up when another student described teachers as actors, even though we had all been taught to frown on the “sage on the stage” kind of teaching. I was young, idealistic, and teaching as art appealed to my romantic sensibilities. Yeah, I knew that the teacher played by Robin Williams in a Dead Poet’s Society was a movie-version of teaching, but….well, maybe? Kinda sorta? I did some theatre in high school….? I could at least try?

If teaching is an art, then the art of first year teachers is like that made by kindergarteners who are first learning how to use paint and glue: it’s messy stuff. Definitely abstract. Hmm…oh, yes…now I see the horse’s tail!

But I survived my first year of teaching. And the second and third. And I have a stash of treasured notes and cards from students—evidence that at least some of my “art” resonated those first few years or the “science” worked and the “sale” was made.

Years passed. I learned a lot more. I experimented and tested. I learned from hundreds of students with different banks of knowledge and skill levels, unique talents, varying interests and personalities. I learned from other teachers; figured out what worked. Learned at least a few things the hard way. Teacher as scientist. The simple fact of repetition, teaching the same class again and again, multiple periods a day— deliberate practice! Over time, I got better at my job which meant my students learned more.

Then I had my own kids and took a break for a few years. The few years turned into fifteen, but seven of them were in a college classroom, supervising student teachers and teaching the methods class. I would sometimes reference that old saying about how those who can’t do, teach, and add, “and those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”

But I could teach, and after while, I decided I missed the doing and went back to full-time teaching.

You can say whatever you want about being a sage on the stage, but the first day of school is like opening night. And because I had spent the last 7 years teaching other people how to be a good teacher, it felt like there was a lot riding on that first day of the second half of my teaching career.

All summer long I planned and replanned what I would have students do on the first day. While running (had to get IN SHAPE!), I rehearsed what I would say to wrap up the lesson— about why learning history is both important and interesting and why they should want to learn it. The tone had to be inspiring, but not preachy; profound, but also playful. A laugh or two couldn’t hurt and a dash of mystery to leave them hungry for more. When August finally rolled around, I was ready: I had timed my opening act, er…first lesson, perfectly. And when I finished, and the bell rang, the kids in my 1st period class applauded. For real. Teaching as art.

I was as relieved as I was elated. Maybe teaching was like riding a bike? Maybe you’re a bit wobbly at first, but then your muscle memory kicks in?

Alas, it wasn’t all applause that first year back in the classroom. It was more than a little humbling to realize how much it easier it is to talk about good teaching than it is to actually do it. But I loved it—the kids, the history I was teaching them, my co-workers. And so I poured my heart and soul into it. There were some great lessons that year— some that felt like art. Some were informed by science. There was standardized testing— business.

The following year I switched grade levels, which sort of meant starting over. I was reminded of something my dear friend and mentor/department chair used to tell me:

“Brown,” he’d say (we always referred to each other by last names), “it takes an entire career to come up with 180 great lessons.” (180 refers to the number of school days we had).

He meant, of course, to reassure the newbie teacher I was at the time not to fret so much that my lesson wasn’t perfect…that it didn’t need to be a masterful work of art. It just needed to get the job done: students needed to learn something.

That saying of his, while reassuring as a new teacher, started to depress me as I racked up the years. I mean, it was kind of sad to think that my 180 lessons wouldn’t achieve greatness until I was ready to retire, right? My students would be getting less-than-perfect lessons until, maybe, my last year of teaching?

Teaching as craft

But then I read Peter Shull’s beautiful post, “Teaching isn't a Science - or an Art.” And his answer helped everything fall into place for me. You simply must read it for yourself. (Link at the end).

But if you want to finish my post before you read his, the spoiler alert is that teaching is a craft. Here’s a quote from it:

Consider the humble craftsperson: painter not of canvases, but the outsides of houses or insides of office buildings. The craftsperson is hired and shows up to do a job; they bring with them their equipment, experience, and expertise. They do not choose the parameters of their work—they set neither range nor limits—but have their parameters assigned. Given this assignment, they must use the tools and expertise they have—often getting creative, occasionally thinking outside the box—to finish the job to the best of their abilities. The craftsperson doesn’t do a uniform job—they don’t produce a uniform product—but they always do the best they can with what they are given.²

As I mulled this post over, I was suddenly reminded of Elizabeth Green’s 2014 book, Building a Better Teacher. I pulled it off the shelf last night. And there, on the inside flap:

A provocative and hopeful book, Building a Better Teacher shows that legendary teachers are more than inspiring; they are perhaps the greatest craftspeople of all.³

If teachers must be artists, we’ve created an impossible task. It adds to the pressure for teachers to be everything to everybody and have every student learn everything in the most inspirational way possible. That’s not real. It goes along with the idea that some people are “born teachers,” which is the myth Green sets out to dismantle in her book. It suggests that teachers either have it, or they don’t. It suggests they don’t need to train, practice, experiment, keep learning, observe other teachers with more or different experience—at other grade levels, or in other subjects. Teaching as science.

And on a practical level, there are 3.8 million teachers in the United States alone.⁴ How many of them were “born” teachers? If the teacher shortage is real, we’re going to need to train and develop teachers.

This year I’ve picked up where I left off in my journey to learn more about the practical/science part of teaching and learning— none of which I ever learned in all my teacher-education prep. Or, as

Blake Harvard

reminds us, maybe I was taught some of it, but I didn’t learn it.⁵

The science will help. The more I learn from the folks in the footnote above, the more I understand why the things I do in the classroom work and the things that don’t work might have failed. But here’s the rub with the science: it doesn’t always work because teachers teach human beings, and we don’t teach under lab conditions.

Let’s go back to the waiting tables/teacher analogy. I was good at waiting tables when it wasn’t too busy. And in a great class, with a skilled teacher, even a less-than-a-masterpiece lesson can work great. But like a restaurant during the dinner rush, even a great teacher struggles on the Friday before spring break, or the day the fire alarm goes off FOUR times, or the day that one of her students learns her mom has breast cancer. Or maybe it’s just a random Tuesday during 5th period. Jaylen will need to sharpen his pencil just when Dante, who rarely participates, raises his hand to answer a question. Ruby will need a tissue, but the box will be empty. Students will eventually settle down and start some silent work just when Penny will accidentally knock her metal water bottle off her desk, startling everyone.

In conclusion…

It would not be until the fall of 2020 that I would again teach the methods class to aspiring history teachers. I was now a “veteran” teacher and teaching 8th grade history full-time during the day. But remotely. On Zoom. It was (as many others observed), like being a first year teacher all over again. “We’re building the airplane while we’re flying it,” everyone said. Who was I to pontificate during a pandemic? Art, science, craft, business— I would reference all of those. I was right there in the trenches with my would-be teachers.

I know—ironic to end with the war metaphor. People use it, I think, because teaching is such hard work and teachers so often feel undervalued, which was especially real during the fall of 2020. Teachers are the butt of jokes (those who can’t do, teach) and when we’re not the rockstar teacher from Dead Poet’s Society, we’re the loser teachers like in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Bart Simpson’s teacher, Edna Krabapple.

Perhaps, as Peter Shull wrote in his post, “Crafts and craftspeople should be more highly esteemed and celebrated in our culture than they currently are. As all true artists knows, art begins in craft.”

So what do you think? Art, science, business or craft? All of the above? None of the above? Other? Please consider continuing the conversation in the comments.

1. You can find Danny Scuderi’s comment here. He also writes his own Substack:

The Formative Assessment

.

2. Teaching isn't a Science - or an Art

3. It’s an interesting book, though not without critics. An unfavorable review from the National Council on Teacher Quality brings up an important point that I will address in a future post. Read more about the book here.

4. See https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/24/key-facts-about-public-school-teachers-in-the-u-s/

5. Blake Harvard has pointed out that teachers tend to talk more about teaching than about learning. Great point, isn’t it? I mean, the whole point of teaching is that the students learn something. I note that in this post I may be guilty of more emphasis on teaching than on learning. But like so many things in education, they are intimately connected. In addition to Blake Harvard, check out

Carl Hendrick

, The Science of Learning by

Jim Hewitt

and

Nidhi Sachdeva

,

Rebecca Birch

,

Claude Goldenberg

and

Zach Groshell

. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.