I saw this from the New York Times this morning – and it certainly rings quite true for me. It is not the content that matters, but the kids.

That’s the hard part, thinking more about the students than about the content. It is probably the biggest challenge for many career switchers. One doesn’t have to be their buddy, but one has to build relationships of trust. Through that trust students become willing to try when they are struggling, or to go further even when at first it seems easy.

The most important thing I do, and the hardest, is getting to know the students, and building on those relationships. The pedagogical process of matching one’s instruction to the students is easy.

Building that relationship of trust is vital. If you can’t do it then why should your students learn what you want to teach them? And if you can, become a teacher.

What does building a relationship accomplish? Usually, one hopes, higher grades. But it can be other things – like helping a kid redirect his or her life. And at times one gains the trust of students so that they will come to you with real problems – ill family members, for example, or unplanned pregnancies. Indeed, each year I tell my students that I want them to learn the subject matter I am teaching, but it is more important to me that they leave my class a better person than they entered it. After all, we teach the whole person, not just the brain.