The Secret Sauce of Inspiration

There’s a clock that sits on the mantle at home of middle school social studies teacher, Barbara Flynn. It represents the Excellence in Teaching award which she received at last year’s annual Harvard Prize Book Award Breakfast in October. The award’s symbolic relevance comes from the inspiration that teachers bring to the classroom each day. As someone who teaches in the eighth grade, Flynn is aware that hers is probably one of the hardest of the school’s six grade levels. “It’s hard for a reason,” she says. “It’s what you take with you when you cross the street to become part of the high school.” And what middle schoolers take is their own maturation as well as the accumulation of all that they’ve been taught in grades seven and eight. “It’s my job to create the conditions for boys to not only have success but see their successes and what they’ve achieved.” In other word, personify the qualities of what the Excellence in Teaching award requires from its winners.

Having had her own boys go through CM as well as through her class has affirmed a few questions Flynn’s had about herself as a teacher, and the value of being tough but fair regarding her students’ comprehension and effort.

“When my youngest, Ryan, was in my class, he’d come home and tell his brother what a hard teacher I was and how unfair I was, and credit to Jake, he got it. He told him how this wasn’t about hard or unfair school was, it was becoming something more than you were and giving your talents a chance. That’s what I do. I give talent a chance.” Flynn is quick to point out that receiving the award isn’t only about what she does day in and day out, but what her colleagues in the middle school all do in shaping each boy to make their high school experience one that they engage with to the fullest. “When you see someone from the middle school excel over in the high school and see where they end up in college, I say, ‘I had a role in that.’ That makes it worth it.”

But for Flynn there is the recognition that students come with different levels of ability in different disciplines and it is here where not only being a seasoned teacher comes into play, but where, if anything, her role as coach tries to rally boys to be better. “The boys in the class who sit in that A level, I don’t need to worry about. They are going to do just fine and for the most part live out their potential. The boys at the other end of the scale, I have to make see that there are pathways to being better, getting better and it starts with effort. If there is a boy who is showing up after class asking for help, I will do everything I can to help him and make him see that his willingness to work will pay off. And for the majority who sit in that middle level, I bring to them the little push they need to take a C to a B or a B to a B-plus. If I can do that, everyone wins.”

Inspiring students from a teacher’s perspective is a mix of using all the tools in their utility belt. There’s a specific tool that works on a specific student. But the skill comes from knowing when to use it. “It was a very nice experience to go for dinner with my husband to the Harvard Club, and receive the recognition. It says perhaps I’m doing something right.” Inspiring students to be more is why teaching is a vocation, because without the care and the heart reaching young boys where they are and making them see what they can become is in and of itself a superpower that comes in with love, dedication, and time—lots of time. Perhaps that’s why Flynn’s award was a clock.