I had this phone interview yesterday with a thoughtful teacher leader. The questions focused on failure: what’s a failure I experienced as a teacher, as a leader, as a teacher interacting with a parent, as an assessor. The questions were fine but called for distinct stories, for specific examples and interactions I had with kids around school.

And I have those stories — when things broke down, when my perceived level of student understanding didn’t match the reality, when I failed to communicate with a kid effectively, when my expectations were not met. I struggled with the questions because as a teacher, a father, and a human being, I fail pretty much continuously. I make mistakes with my students each day. Of the thousand decisions I make each day — how should I talk to this student? How should I structure this assignment? How should I offer help? What should I suggest? Should I be funny or serious? Should I bring up past conversations or not? Should I talk about what I know of their life, their family, or merely hint at it? Should I ask questions or give advice? — a significant portion are decisions I’d reconsider.

Yet I also have clear ideas about what I want for my students. I want them to use their significant social and academic skills to solve real world problems. I want them to monitor their own learning and to be able to adapt to difficult situations. Each conversation, each interaction via email or gchat or in the comments section of a paper, I’m trying to get them towards these goals.

But what felt weird about this interview is that it seemed like you could isolate certain factors. Let’s look at the way someone asks questions without any sense of the context of the class. Or let’s look at the student work without any sense of where in the year it was written or what real world purpose it might serve. Let’s ask teachers to forget about everything except how they’re completing one particular task.

Don’t get me wrong…I understand the impulse. If we can block from our minds the social and cultural worlds of a school, a community, and a city, and pretend that they have no impact on what the classroom might feel like, then we can laser in on one point. And if we declare that all a teacher needs is guidance on a few areas, areas that can somehow be isolated, then we can believe that we can improve education without addressing the structural inqualities that permeate American life.

We’ll see whether I make it to the interview stage…