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Showing posts from October, 2016

Comparing Teaching to Medicine

I’ve heard teaching and practicing medicine compared before, but I’ve often stood against the idea of diagnosing an illness in students. I don’t like talk of deficits and what students can’t do ; I like to focus on what they can do. But as I listened to Danielle Ofri’s book, What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect thePractice of Medicine , I found that teachers and doctors have a lot more in common than I thought.   What started as a quick $5.00 Audible purchase turned into a book where I found that others expressed similar frustrations—others in a profession that’s often highly regarded and esteemed in ways that teaching isn’t lately. This is a book that I’m going to have to buy in print and read again. Like C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we’re not alone,” and after reading Ofri’s work, teachers will know that they’re not. When I heard Ofri share a doctor’s reason for staying late even though it would affect his family life, I paused: “Because it’s the right thing to do