From the back of a pizza box, shortened:

"The CEO says to the teacher: 'Teaching. Ha. What sort of a person becomes a teacher, thinks their best option in life is to teach. Pathetic. You're a teacher, so tell me, What do you make?"
"The teacher to the CEO: 'I make students sit up in class, make them pay attention when they don't want to, make them achieve more than they thought possible etc, etc. In short, I make a difference.'"

A beautiful snippet, far easier to endure than any of the innumerable hero-teacher movies where a first year teacher, armed with a bachelor's and A Way With Kids goes into inner city school X, conquers ignorance and wins the hearts of students, without either supplies or the support of parents or administration. Vomitous.

The question remains though, what difference do teachers make? Really? Student thanks, cards, gifts and remonstrations of gratitude notwithstanding.

To put it bluntly, it is at least often the case that your best students are the ones you didn't actually have to teach anything; they are the ones that need you the least. And the ones that struggle the most? How often does the student who struggles the most have a breakthrough and become the top student in the class and go onto work in the field? It could happen, but even if it were the case, who of us would want to work in his/her area of greatest struggle? In such a case, the teacher helps the kid through a year in the subject hopefully without any major injury on the part of teacher or student.

What's the difference?

While we're on the topic, it must be said that the worst teacher on the planet -and by far the most dangerous- is the one who consciously and willfully desires to get out into the classrooms "in order to make a difference". God help anyone, and the students of anyone, whose primary aim is To Make A Difference. You need to want something else more. Run like hell from this guy.

What counts as a difference? Can it be quantified? Does it need to be quantified to exist or matter? If it cannot be quantified how do we know if we are accomplishing anything? How is teaching more or less than glorified babysitting?

Well, for starters, God did appoint some as teachers.

A start.

I laughed at my Ed Prof's words then, but fall sadly silent before them now, hoping, not even to find an answer, but to eventually be confident that there is an answer.

"The question is not, 'What is Education?'. but rather, 'What counts as education?'."