Buck Naked Emperors
On the Preponderance of Non-Teachers in Professional Development
Note: This piece isn’t driven by any specific experience in my current workplace, where non-teachers generally understand how their lack of direct teaching affects their perspectives.
As a teacher, I sit well to the right on the spectrum of “wants to learn about teaching.” I’m naturally resistant to teaching philosophies that diverge from my own, but I’m open to learning about them to understand why others might embrace them. Even with this openness, I find myself far less interested in hearing about teaching practices from people who are not actively teaching. If you’re not teaching kids, I’m less interested in your views on teaching them. I’ve spent 22 years trying to reconcile this stance, trying to give equal weight to the ideas of non-teachers, but I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s not worth the effort.
And honestly, why should it be? Why should anyone doing a job care as much about the opinions of people who aren’t doing that job? There are legitimate reasons non-teachers might have something valuable to contribute to discussions about teaching, such as:
- Many non-teachers in education were once teachers.
- Distance from the classroom can provide objectivity.
