A Teacher's Value

As of this writing, Apple is the most valuable company in the world — a title they’ve mostly held onto since receiving it in August 2011. Looking at Apple’s financial history, anyone would surmise that Apple owes its value to the product most of us use hourly, iPhone. While that’s largely true and unarguable, it’s also an important point to clarify.

Ignoring size variations, Apple has designed and released 21 different models of iPhone since its original release in 2007. When you think about what makes Apple so valuable though, it’s not the 21 different models of iPhone it has released — it’s Apple’s ability to design and release amazing new iPhones. Better put, Apple’s valuation would tank if it released an iPhone no one bought or if it stopped releasing a new iPhone each year. So its value does not hinge on iPhone of the past but instead, iPhone of the future. Now you might be thinking, what does any of this have to do with teachers, let’s connect some dots.

Teachers are overworked and underpaid, and I doubt there’s a soul on this planet that believes otherwise. Like most teachers, you likely spent your evenings and weekends designing lesson plans to achieve specific learning outcomes. After several attempts and tweaks, those lesson plans and learning outcomes may have garnered respect, praise, and maybe even the teaching position you’re in now. Far too often though, teachers believe their success is based on the lesson plans they used to get here. As a result, teachers begin to protect their lesson plans and prevent as many people as possible from seeing them. Some even go as far to believe their lesson plans are “tried & true”, and should simply be repeated every year. I say otherwise.

Like Apple, I believe a teacher’s value comes from their ability to create amazing lesson plans — not from the lesson plans they’ve already created. This means the lesson plans you’ve already created are worthless, not useless — worthless. They’re still very much useful, be it to yourself, your co-workers, or teachers just starting out. But, to believe they’re what determines your value as a teacher would be incorrect. And so, if a teachers value comes from their ability to create amazing lesson plans, how does a teacher go about constantly justifying their value?

To start, teachers need to recognize they’re in the business of designing lesson plans to achieve learning outcomes. This process requires time, exploration, and experimentation. In todays classroom, these things are luxuries so what’s the solution?

The first option is iteration. Constantly improving an existing plan to increase the impact of it’s delivered learning outcome. Why does Apple iterate iPhone each year?

The second option is collaboration. If 3 people spend 30 minuets collaborating, they’ll likely get more quality work done than a single person spending 90 minutes. Why does Apple have teams of people working on the upcoming iPhone?

Just as teachers need to recognize what they ARE in the business of, they also need to recognize what they’re NOT in the business of. More specifically, teachers are not in the business of hoarding lesson plans, or designing lesson plans that are intended to be “tried & true”. There should be no monopoly on learning. Get collaborative and creative — that’s what we want from the kids, after all.