Last week, we explored the essence of a Nietzsche quote that implied teachers need to put aside their own needs, and thus personalities, when they enter the classroom. Reader Wolfe disagreed:

I became a teacher in large part to share my passion for learning. If you have no passion of your own, I think you limit what you have to offer to your students.... I firmly believe that the fact that I have a rich life outside of teaching brings something extra to my classroom.

I can see what Wolfe is getting at here. I feel that my most valuable teaching tool is my ability to connect with students, often through sharing my personal idiosyncrasies and life experiences.

How do you share your personality with your students? I remember my third grade teacher Mrs. Richmond was passionate about square dancing, and so she gave us square dancing lessons each week, culminating in a recital at the end of the year. Without Mrs. Richmond, I guess I wouldn't know how to do-si-do.

What would it be like to live in the White House?

Explore this intriguing question through the Letters From The White House Writing Contest which offers a fun way for you and your students to explore presidential life as a class. I recommend reading a story book together (or other age-appropriate reading material) to give some background and start the creative juices flowing. I think the final products could make a great bulletin board display, too.

The deadline is in February, so schedule time in your lesson plan book soon.

With Barack Obama's Inauguration and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day falling in the same week, now's the perfect time to explore the lessons of the Civil Rights movement. This collection of King Day activities should give you plenty of ideas and resources for introducing your students to the legacy of a true American hero.

I recommend using Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech as the cornerstone of your instruction this week (and leading into February's Black History Month). My favorite book about Dr. King is called Martin's Big Words. My students always enjoy reading it as a group and find inspiration from the story.

Do you have any special activities planned to observe Inauguration Day with your students?

Reader Will examined the Six Traits of Successful Teachers and particularly identified with the idea that good teachers must live outside of their own needs. As he commented:

[The above] dovetails too well into a remark of Nietzsche from his work, Human, All Too Human.

"Anyone who is a teacher is usually incapable of doing something on his own for his own benefit; he is always thinking of the benefit for his students, and any knowledge gives him pleasure only insofar as he can teach it. He considers himself finally as a passageway of knowledge and generally as a means, so that he has lost the ability to take himself seriously." [section 200 of chapter four]

Would you agree that the best teachers have "lost the ability to take [themselves] seriously?"

If I understand this Nietzsche quote correctly, I think I can see both sides. I believe that teachers do need to learn to put themselves and their own egos aside when they are in the classroom, considering the needs of others more than their own. But I would assert that all educators can and should refill their own metaphorical wells by satisfying their own curiosities and passions whenever possible - even if it's only during vacations.

What do you think?