Good teachers instill knowledge, great teachers inspire

When it comes to doing no harm to students, there are two dimensions that we need to consider: the first is instructional and the second is affective.

The duty of a teacher is to teach students and prepare them for life. Good teachers must seek out classroom best practices that leverage more powerful ways of teaching. They must constantly self-evaluate and reflect on their practice to make sure that they are doing the best job they can. They must get professional development to grow beyond their current understanding and limitations. Good teachers instill the knowledge and skills that students will need in life to succeed, and they do it in the most effective way they know. Good teachers do not teach how they were taught nor how they have always taught. Instead, they must try new methods each time they teach, learning and growing from their experiences. This means that anyone can become a good teacher as long as they are not dogmatic about their practice. This is what makes for a good teacher.

Great teachers, on the other hand, inspire students to be all they can be and more. They take care to never shame, denigrate, or demean students. Doing so would only alienate and demotivate students from learning. I believe that there is no such thing as a stupid student; only uninspired and unmotivated ones. I have personally found that even students that are labeled Learning Disabled are brilliant in their own ways. Not everyone is or should be brilliant in math. We are all stupid in some ways and brilliant in other ways. We are all unique in our interests, talents, and ambitions. This diversity is what makes society interesting. Teachers must identify the ways in which a student is brilliant and what they are interested in so that they can customize how they teach to that student, and by doing so, hopefully inspire, motivate, and empower them to become lifelong learners.

To close, doing no harm means that teacher must teach in the most effective way they can while making sure that they engage students in meaningful and personally relevant ways that encourage self-discovery and a love of learning. To bad all of this is easier said than done.