Recently, Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Education at Microsoft, gave an analogy during his talk at the E2 Educator’s Conference in Singapore, he said: “If you took a surgeon from a hunded years ago out if an operating theatre and put him or her in a hospital today they would be completely lost and not aware of what to do, etc., but if you took a teacher from a hundred years ago and put him or her into a classroom they’d know what to do and they would be fine.” They would be fine because, no matter what subject or what age you teach, the base line of a good teacher is, as George Couros proclaimed, relationships, relationships, relationships. Furthermore, Katie Martin talks about surrounding yourself with people who will build you up and make you better. Teachers strive to be one of those people for their students.

Rather it is the resilience, the empathy, the humanity that are the most important, lasting things we teach.

No matter what subject we may be teaching, in the end the best we can teach our students have nothing to do with the subject at all. Rather it is the resilience, the empathy, the humanity that are the most important, lasting things we teach. We have many avenues and contexts to do this, but this is why a teacher is timeless. This is what will create a just society and good citizens. This is what will build a better world.