One Great Teacher - Thomas Friedman

When it comes to a discussion of the attributes of a truly great teacher there is one recent essay I generally turn to. Written by the immensely talented Thomas Friedman, he of the world famous tome, The World is Flat, the essay is a tribute to his high school journalism teacher, Hattie M. Steinberg. Unfortunately for Hattie and for Friedman, the writer did not pen the reflection until he learned that his former teacher had passed away.

Friedman Remembers His Favorite Teacher
To set the stage, we turn to directly to the words of the 2002 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary:

I grew up in a small suburb of Minneapolis,
and Hattie was the legendary journalism teacher
at St. Louis Park High School, Room 313.
I took her intro to journalism course in 10th grade,
back in 1969,
and have never needed, or taken,
another course in journalism since.
She was that good.

Those of us on the paper,
and the yearbook that she also supervised,
lived in Hattie’s classroom.
We hung out there before and after school.
Now, you have to understand,
Hattie was a single woman, nearing 60 at the time,
and this was the 1960’s. She was the polar opposite of “cool,”
but we hung around her classroom
like it was a malt shop and she was Wolfman Jack.
None of us could have articulated it then,
but it was because we enjoyed being harangued by her,
disciplined by her and taught by her.
She was a woman of clarity in an age of uncertainty.

Friedman also notes she taught everyone, students and other adults, what was right:

…….told the story of one of Hattie’s last birthday parties,
when one man said he had to leave early
to take his daughter somewhere.
”Sit down,” said Hattie. ”You’re not leaving yet.
She can just be a little late.”

That was my teacher!
I sit up straight just thinkin’ about her.

The Critical Attributes
The truly great classroom teachers, regardless of grade level or subject matter taught, have several things in common. Friedman’s wonderful remembrance brings everyone of these to mind.

The best teachers have the ability to break the material down into meaningful chunks that students are able to digest. These building blocks, whether they be in math or a journalism class, are the basics that Friedman refers to. As the class moves forward and the knowledge builds, the teacher finds ways to reintroduce those fundamentals along the way as she seeks to ensure that the material builds in a cohesive and logical manner. In such classrooms, when the class or the school year is done, students not only have learned a great deal, they are clear about what they have learned, why they have learned it and most importantly, how to apply it.

Yet another key element is the characteristic or feature I have always referred to as presence. It is that special mix of intellect, care, and authority that a teacher possesses that earns that teacher the respect of the students. With the proper mix of such attributes, students actually enjoy being in that teacher’s classroom - they generally even want to spend more time with that person than is required. Teachers with presence need not necessarily be disciplinarians such as Ms. Steinberg, in fact those attributes look very different at the elementary level than at the high school level, but those with presence are the very people that students are drawn to. Notice Friedman’s acknowledgment that she was no Wolfman Jack yet these teenage boys still spent their free time in her midst.

A third key element is the desire and the ability to teach much more than the curriculum, in this case the basics of journalism. The quality teachers teach students something about the world around them, a bit about life and a lot about both work ethic and being good people. Notice Friedman points as much to her focus on teaching him “how to comport himself in a professional way and to always do quality work.” These are lessons he remembers to this day. In fact that is the case with most of the great teachers, they teach students far more than the written course curriculum.

And lastly, Ms. Steinberg was demanding of excellence. Her students had to earn their place in her classroom and on the newspaper staff. It is hard to imagine one of the greatest writers of our generation not measuring up and being unable to write for his high school paper. But, that somehow was the case with young Friedman. Yet instead of writing him off, or pushing him aside, Ms. Steinberg first found a way for the writer-to-be to be involved on the business end. After his commitment, she then found a way to give him a chance with the Sharon interview. There is little doubt that her inclusion and subtle mark of support was extremely meaningful but I also suspect that when she gave a young man another chance to prove himself he was totally aware of what it would take to meet her expectations.

The Great Teachers Teach Students What Matters
Friedman ends his essay with two paragraphs that demonstrate why he is considered such a gifted writer. In those two paragraphs, a man who has written extensively about the impact of technology on society adds his views as to how it fits with the fundamentals of education.

His final two paragraphs also clearly articulate the critical attributes Hattie brought to the classroom every single day she stood before her beloved students.

I have been thinking about Hattie a lot this year,
not just because she died on July 31,
but because the lessons she imparted
seem so relevant now. We’ve just gone through
this huge dot-com-Internet-globalization bubble
– during which a lot of smart people
got carried away and forgot the fundamentals
of how you build a profitable company,
a lasting portfolio, a nation state or a thriving student.
It turns out that the real secret of success
in the information age is what it always was:
fundamentals — reading, writing and arithmetic,
church, synagogue and mosque,
the rule of law and good governance.

The Internet can make you smarter,
but it can’t make you smart.
It can extend your reach,
but it will never tell you what to say at a P.T.A. meeting.
These fundamentals cannot be downloaded.
You can only upload them,
the old-fashioned way,
one by one,
in places like Room 313 at St. Louis Park High.
I only regret that I didn’t write this column
when the woman who taught me all that was still alive.

Note: Friedman’s essay also appears in his book, Longitudes and Attitudes, a collection of his NY Times columns.