The Myth of the Master Teacher: A Thread

I’ve always been fascinated by the messages sent about expertise in K-12 education. This fascination began with a personal goal I’ve always had for myself: to become the best teacher I can possibly be and keep getting better.

My personal beliefs about my own upper limits as a professional are predicated on some wider beliefs I hold about my profession. When I look at teaching, I have always seen the potential unlimited depth, for continual growth.

Theoretically, one could remain a teacher for the duration of their career and improve each year. One could get to the end of a career and still not become as good as they could possibly be. That idea has always motivated me, kept me enthusiastic through countless tribulations.

It is with that fundamental belief held firmly that I begin my analysis of the words and messages I’ve heard used to describe the concept of mastery within K-12 education. This is, of course, very subjective and anecdotal.

My first experience with the term, “master teacher” came just as my career was getting started. My second year after graduating, I was hired as a classroom teacher along with a about a half a dozen other brand new teachers. It was a high stakes, high pressure environment.

High pressure because of the administration’s leadership style, high stakes because we had all been hired using funding from a temporary grant. It was a clear competition. Professional musical chairs. Only future “master teachers” would make the cut.

The administration bandied about the term “master teacher” liberally, using it to describe a wide array of teachers including the principal’s favorites, veterans, and a few of us rookies. I knew I wanted to be a master teacher, it didn’t know what it meant. I looked around.

This was my first experience with closed doors. If you want to get better at your craft, you look to the masters. To my dismay, I found the the doors to the masters’ rooms were closed to me, to everyone. There was nothing the master teachers disliked more than observations.

There were clues as to what made a “master teacher” in those early days. Someone might redecorate their classroom. I’d hear “master teacher” to describe that person. Someone would purchase an expensive, well-curated classroom library. Boom. “Master teacher.”

Bulletin boards, as it turned out, were the key to unlocking that coveted descriptor. I set to work. I wanted to put up the best bulletin boards. Doors were closed, so bulletin boards must be the window into master teaching. They must reflect the pedagogy of the master inside.

I covered my practice with butcher paper and found that it did little to boost my stock. And it didn’t do much for my personal gratification. I didn’t feel like a better teacher.

I scraped through that year. I got pinkslipped. I probably deserved it. I hadn’t grown much and neither had my students. But the most dismaying detail was that I wasn’t leaving with a better idea of how to achieve mastery.

I did, however, leave with a parting shot. My principal, noting my “potential to become a master teacher,” made a show of typing out a glowing referral email to other principals, only to delete it when she thought I wasn’t looking. I was more confused than ever.

After many interviews and just as many rejections (I was everyone’s second choice, not enough experience), I landed in another district. I was deflated, but otherwise undeterred. I still wanted to be the best that I could be. I just needed to figure out how. I looked, I listened.

Here, I did not hear the term “master teacher.” Instead, experience was the name of the game. Experience made you a “veteran” and being a veteran made you an “expert.” I was curious as to what was the threshold for becoming “experienced.”

Four years and a day. That was the threshold. The time it took you to get tenured in the state was somehow tantamount to the time it took you to become an expert in your field. I looked around. The favored ones, the ones who got shout outs, the measuring sticks, all tenured.

That seemed doable. Hang on for several more years and not only would I acquire the magical pinkslip-proof protection spell, I’d also automatically gain expertise (and therefore, regard) in the process. I was already a couple years behind my peers, but surely I’d get there soon.

Like a kid who think they’ll grow an inch the morning of their birthday, I thought I’d passively achieve expertise the minute I got tenured. Notwithstanding, I still wanted to actively grow my practice in the interim. I looked around. I asked questions.

“Don’t ask questions,” my assigned mentor teacher told me. “It makes it look like you don’t know what you’re doing.” Also: “Don’t be showing us up.”
I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know what I was doing. Surely I did because, you know, undergrad. I stopped asking questions.

I kept looking around, though. I kept listening. “So-and-so is a is a veteran teacher.” “She’s been around for while so she’s an expert teacher.” I heard variations of this constantly. I tried to look into their classrooms. But their doors were closed to me.

In addition to at least having been around long enough to gain tenure, all of the administration’s favorites had another thing in common: I had absolutely no idea how they taught. I couldn’t observe them, no one videotaped themselves. It was a mystery.

Tenure became my white whale. It was an obsession that was growing to eclipse that other obsession of mine: to become the best that I could possibly be. Because, here’s the thing: I had grown to believe that tenure could cause me to be the best teacher I could be.

But why did it seem like tenure lead to diminishing returns? I noted a phenomenon. Teachers would teach until tenure, get told they were “veterans” and/or “experts,” get the message that they had reached a pinnacle, and then just stop growing and changing. They would crystallize.

The “best teachers” the ones the ones my administration would vaguely gesture towards as the shining examples of pedagogy were pedagogically perennial. They came back the same way, year after year. Always blooming, but never growing, never changing.

By this point, I was starting to form a pretty messed up perception of expertise in education. But that core belief that to improve was to change still nagged at me. I sought out PD. I finally found a mentor teacher that didn’t want to bury me. I started to grow and change.

I started to get better. My practice improved. My students were growing. I had something to say, something to offer. But I wasn’t tenured and I was a perpetual rookie (my principal had me change grade levels every year). I was taking courses in “teacher leadership.”

I wanted to be a “teacher leader.” I thought that maybe that term would be a gateway to the other terms I coveted: “expert.” “Master teacher.” It’s hard to be a leader when no one takes you seriously. Remember: I want tenured. I wasn’t yet a “veteran.”

The years passed. I got tenure. But those precious words still eluded me. I wanted those words to be spoken in the same breath as my name. I wanted to become best I could possibly be. Those words would be my title belt. Proof that I had made it.

Over time, I began to achieve what probably could be seen as some degree of real mastery. I got trained in Reading Recovery. I started presenting at conferences. I received advanced training in math pedagogy. Still, those words never found themselves nestled next to my name.

I was locked in the grip of true cognitive dissonance. Here I was, starting to get the suspicion that I was getting good but the words used to describe me didn’t gel. “Rookie.” “Inexperienced.” “New.” “Green.” “Emerging.” “Below level.” I was more confused than ever.

I left that district in search of a lot of things, including new words. Of course, I was still in search of personal growth, curious to know which words my new colleagues would use to describe, and indeed shape the perception of expertise and mastery in my new school.

I received more training. Joined cohorts and cadres. Got PD. Gave PD. Teachers from surrounding counties came to watch me teach (my doors were metaphorically always open). I even helped draft my state’s revised academic standards. I started to feel like I was becoming a master.

Another thing happened, too. I finally found an administrator who valued my practice, my pedagogy. This was huge for me.

But something new and strange started to happen. Those words that had always eluded me? I started to hear them more and more. But when they came, they preceded some new words: “you should become a...”

The words that follow vary, but they’re usually some form of, “professor” or “administrator” or “consultant.” No matter the words, the implication is the same: “you have outgrown teaching. It’s time to move on.”

So to recap, just as I start to wave at mastery as I pass it in the hallway, ambition (not mine, mind you) beckons me keep walking, right out the door.

Again, I find myself in the grip of dissonance. I still, at my core, believe that teaching holds boundless depths, innumerable opportunities to grow and change without ever needing to leave the classroom. I could teach for another 15 years and barely scratch the surface.

But that’s not aligned with what I’m hearing. The messages I’m receiving, indeed, the messages many teachers receive, is that my ambition should be straining the cinderblock walls of my classroom by now. “Teacher” should give way to new, more revered monikers.

A picture begins to form. Teaching must be less like an unfathomable ocean and more like a mountain, a hill really. You ascend one side, summit somehow, and descend on the other side, just before scoping out the next hill to climb.

To put a very fine point on it: teachers get told they’re not good enough right until the moment they are, at which point they’re told they are too good and need to leave.

This is all part of a greater narrative, a narrative told with words. The words were hear tell us that our profession isn’t distinguished enough. We get the message that, in spite of our advanced degrees and training, we are not academics like professors.

We have a huge, well-documented teacher retention and attrition problem. We have trouble recruiting people into the profession, yes. But we also have trouble keeping people. We really have trouble holding on to good teachers.

I won’t try to synthesize the myriad reasons why people leave the classroom. There are tremendous societal, political, economic, and social drivers to the issue of teacher attrition. I will humbly add that it doesn’t help the issue when we constantly tell good teachers to go.

To be ambitious in the world of education, especially public education has to mean something different than it does in other professions. A conventional view of ambition pushes the good teachers away from the classroom just as they begin to show mastery.

If there is such a thing as the mythological “master teacher,” it’s hard to find one in the field. The reason being: they’re not in schools. They get headhunted, recruited, pushed out, or pulled in. They get told that they’re outgrowing their shells. The shells become oppressive.

There’s another place where good teachers go. It’s a dark place, Simba, and you must never go there. I’m referring to the world of edu-celebrities. The former teachers, the education-adjacent influencers who have website and logos and demand huge fees to speak at conferences.

The art and science of pedagogy has no ceiling. But we’ve created an artificial funnel, partially with the words we say to each other. We hit the tapered walls and either get lost in the mix or find ourselves fighting our way through the narrow tunnel toward something “better.”

What is there for the teacher whose ambition lies in the pursuit of mastery? Where does one go when they don’t want to go anywhere? Where does one turn when they’re not as much I interested in advancing their career as they are advancing their practice?

I love pedagogy because it can never be mastered. But it’s honorable to strive for mastery. It’s cool to want to get better every year. It’s ambitious to aim for the obsolescence of your past pedagogy. Teachers are academics, even if we don’t always see ourselves that way.

We do a disservice to our students when we become complacent. We become complacent when we create a culture of illusory mastery. Tell a teacher that they’re done growing and watch as they stop growing. Then watch as their students do, too.

I was equal parts fascinated and dismayed by some of the reactions to my recent tweet about conference speakers. I asked if we could get a non entrepreneurial education speaker. The entrepreneurs jumped on me. They have a right to make money off of their expertise. Absolutely!

The edu-entrepreneurs are people who, ostensibly are masters at their craft. So good that they can’t be contained by a classroom. They seek to influence active teachers through books, podcasts, speaking engagements, and merch. They absolutely have something to contribute.

But they exist as a testament to how we bottleneck our ambition, send it careening upwards someplace else. Ambition does not have to have money, fame, and status as an outlet. Ambition can manifest itself in the futile (but virtuous) pursuit of professional mastery.

I recall an announcement on the website of one such edu-celeb it read that so-and-so was “excited to announce his return to the classroom,” presumably after a stint on the conference circuit. I was excited, too! Clearly the guy must be a good teacher.

It turned out that he was returning to a classroom in a private school. One that he helps to run. I was disappointed. Not in him, but for the hundreds or perhaps thousands of kids and teachers he could’ve influenced in the a public school environment.

Words create culture & culture drives actions. Our culture is driving teachers away. Some before they even begin. Others just as they start to become the best they can possibly be. “Master teachers” are not the ones who reached the end; they’re the ones who know there isn’t one.

TL/DR version: teachers aren’t necessarily good because they are experienced. There’s no such thing as a master teacher. We shouldn’t tell good teachers that teaching is too small for their abilities. Pedagogy is an unlimited pursuit.