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I am encouraged by my preservice teachers’ desires to be educators; it is
important that they are invested and excited about their chosen profession. If they
choose to name this a calling, I do not take issue with this positioning. However, I
am disturbed when we place otherworldly expectations on teachers as illustrated in
Walls’ words. When we begin to position teachers as divine or savior-like, we set up
human individuals for failure.

Teaching Quote #3: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where
his influence stops.” – Henry Adams (Adams, 1983)
When I think back on my own educational experiences, I recall teachers who
influenced me, shaped my thinking, and mentored me in my learning. However,
I also acknowledge the important roles that community and family played in my
development as a person. I am worried about the pressure that an eternal impact can
have on educators if they are singled out as primarily influential on the future. It is
true that everyone’s actions can have lasting impacts, so perhaps a more community-
based and collaborative approach towards impacting the future would be more
realistic and constructive.

The three quotations I analyzed above are only a few of those that gave me
pause when browsing popular teaching quotes. No matter our profession, I do think
we want to be productive and provide positive change in our roles as guided by
meaningful expectations. However, when these expectations lean into the other-
worldly or become extremely lofty, often beyond an individual’s control, I think we
need to reconsider what goals guide our work.

“Researcher-y” Enough?
On the other hand, I sometimes feel that I am not “researcher-y” enough for
my profession. I had no idea what counted as research when I arrived at graduate
school. I just knew I wanted to learn more about what it meant to know and do
mathematics and demonstrate mathematical understanding. I developed an
appreciation for educational research during my graduate studies, and I came to
understand mathematics education research—broadly. I felt that any research I
conducted needed to be tied to actionable results or impact my students or some
students or teachers of mathematics in positive ways.
I was lucky enough to be involved in a middle school curriculum project, the
Connected Mathematics Project (CMP), a National Science
Foundation-funded curriculum series (Lappan et al., 2002)
that modeled the power of partnerships involving institutions
of higher education, K–12 schools, researchers, teachers, When we begin to
parents, and participants in mathematics education. I learned
to value in-depth discussions about small nuggets of math, position teachers as...

a luxury I did not have in my own high school mathematics savior-like, we set up
classroom. I learned the importance of communicating
to varied audiences. How do we talk about mathematics human individuals for
education with teachers, students, parents, school personnel, failure.
or community members? I engaged in deep conversations
about the goal of creating a math-literate population.

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