In her introduction to Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott writes:
One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
This also describes the gifts of being a teacher—a great teacher profoundly committed to reflective practice, continuous improvement, and unceasingly opening the world to students, colleagues, and themselves. Teaching “gives [us] an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” Which curricula, lessons, moments have become rote? We cannot not seek improvement that “motivates [us] to look closely at life”—closely at each and all students as they “lurch by and tramp around.” Seek small, medium, and, upon close study, large improvements that open your world. And theirs.
