Paul Barnwell, who teaches high school English in Louisville, KY, gives five reasons why teaching remains a great job, in this excellent piece on Education Week Teacher, describing numerous small moments in which he helps kids achieve. That’s a great way to bring our best work home to the public.

Just a couple of qualifiers:

1) As you’ll see, he claims he doesn’t want to help kids build character (though actually, it sounds like he really does do that). With new research showing the importance of “non-cognitive” factors in students’ school success (read Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners available on the web from the Chicago Consortium on School Research) this seems like an inadvisable stand.

2) We need to get essays like Barnwell’s out to the wider public, not just on Education Week Teacher online.