What is the Holy Grail solution/answer in education?

Bird Droppings August 9, 2026

What is the Holy Grail solution/answer in education?

An article popped up as I was driving around, trying to get photos of the moon and sunrise, and hopefully a deer or some other creature. It was from Ed Week, the NEA (National Education Association) newsletter. Each of the articles was in reference to legislation being presented or trying to get past. One regarded reading and was based on test scores. Another was on reading readiness and again test scores. A third was on how boys are left behind in kindergarten, and guess what, based on test scores. We drive education through standardized test scores, and yet children are not standardized.

Yesterday my wife and I went to a small café at the horse show we were attending in Camden, SC. A woman and her nineteen-month-old little boy were there waiting on food as we were. The little boy was smiling at us, and my wife Pat made a comment to the woman about how great he was doing developmentally and physically. Pat is a family nurse practitioner and sees many children every day. I was watching other things as an educator and psychologist. I was waving my hand, and two hands and so forth, and the little boy was imitating. I changed to holding up one finger and he looked at his hand and was trying to figure out how to make his hand do that. He was cognitively doing great as well.

As we talked to the mother, she indicated he had been born with a problem that needed extensive physical therapy, and this could be why he has progressed so far. She was very proud of how far he had come, and we were impressed with this little guy. But it made me think he progressed because of involvement and hands on and interaction. Not every child gets that much specific attention. So much of what we determined about this little boy was also from experience and intuition and not measured testing.

“Obsessive search for the holy grail through only that which can be measured and documented effectively diminishes the sacred and leaves us standing empty without souls.” Dr. Grant Bennett

A day or two ago I got carried away a bit and wandered into about two thousand words on what it is about great teachers and why we can’t teach that. Well, in my discourse I did not really solve the dilemma, but a response from a dear friend, a former professor in my graduate studies and who was a middle school gifted teacher, got me thinking. I recalled a scene from an Indiana Jones movie where the old knight who has guarded the Holy Grail for thousands of years has an evil Nazi officer trying to pick the Grail from hundreds of cups.

He chooses a gaudy and elaborate chalice and soon feels the pain of his error, and he disintegrates before our eyes. (Movie special effects, of course) Shortly thereafter, Indiana Jones has the same situation and chooses a simple, plain cup to dip from the water of life in order to save his father. For hundreds of years, we held an idea of a fancy, embellished chalice as the epitome of the Grail, and yet it was a simple cup that so often was not even seen. Looking back at Dr. Bennett’s thoughts in education, we have sought the Holy Grail in testing, in curriculum, in various new-fangled gimmickry full of trappings and programs, and maybe we truly missed the secret of good or great teaching and education.

I had to sit back, ponder, and think about my response a bit to Dr. Bennett’s follow-up to my note of the other day. Seldom do I skip a day in my meanderings as I think about the coming weekend and driving over seven hundred miles, and we old folks will be worn out. We will be going in all different directions: North Carolina for a first birthday for our granddaughter and to Thomaston, Georgia for a third birthday for another granddaughter. Nearly three years ago, on a drive to Florida for our first granddaughter’s birth, my daughter-in-law gave me a book by Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher.

“It’s a humbling experience, but I think that it is a good one too, for someone who writes books on education to come back into the classroom and stand up there as the teacher does day after day and be reminded in this way what it is like in the real world. I sometimes think every education writer, every would-be education expert, and every politician who pontificates as many do so condescendingly, about the failings of the teachers in the front lines of our nation’s public schools ought to be obliged to come in a classroom at least once a year and find out what it is like. It might at least impart some moderation to the disrespectful tone which so many politicians speak of teachers.” Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a young teacher

As I started this book by Kozol, one of the first letters discusses that first day of teaching we all went through. Over the years, I have had several as I moved from Pennsylvania and my first teaching job to a program I started in Macon, Georgia, and then to a school in Warner Robins. But the day I recall most vividly and forgot about was when I started back after nearly twenty-three years away from teaching. I started on a Tuesday in September of 2001. Just by chance, it was September 11th. For most of the year, had you asked me what day I started teaching, I would have responded the weekend after Labor Day. However, my principal one day came in and said What day did you start and I pulled out a calendar, and sure enough, my first day was spent in lockdown. I was replacing a teacher who had a nervous breakdown dealing with the EBD kids that I was thrust into.

So here I was; I had not taught a day in twenty-plus years and was stuck in a room, I should say locked in a room with ten kids who all had been in jail or were still on probation. What do you do? Curriculum was out the door, and over a few minutes we had our windows covered and all outside contact severed. Here I was with ten kids who were actually some of the worst in discipline referrals in the school in a tiny room for about five hours. I winged it, and we got to know each other. It wasn’t long till those kids came to my class and not to others, which of course did not sit well with some of the other teachers whose classes they were missing. I thought about this and still, at times, wonder why I was being successful with them, and another teacher had a nervous breakdown. I come back to perhaps it is not something we can put a label on, but an easy word to use is relationships.

Teaching is about relationships; it is about building and maintaining them. I went out of my way to know these kids beyond the fact that they were all jailbirds or into things most kids in high school would have never thought of. After my long drop the other day, another note from a high school friend who taught Literature in high school in Pennsylvania for thirty-six years, loving every minute of it. I was asked the other day who my favorite high school teacher was, and I could at the time only recall one. A former classmate from high school sent this email quite a few years back, but definitely still relevant.

“Anyway…your point is well-taken. What makes a great teacher? I can honestly say that many teachers at Scott influenced me: Joey Inners, John Kerrigan, Dave DeFroscia, Joan Tuckloff, and, of course, Miss Cristoforo. They made classes come alive; they went the extra mile; they touched my spirit and made me realize what I could do if I worked hard and applied the talents I had. I think Mark Twain said: Teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theater. I think he was right. If the students like a teacher, they will walk through fire for them. One of my favorite activities asked students to write a quick note to a teacher who made an impression on them, thanking them for what they did. It was the best assignment ever. Here’s a salute to all of the teachers who have influenced me.” Beckie Backstetter Chiodo

My father once told me that teaching was entertainment as well as imparting knowledge. I am sure he had read Twain’s comment, as much like me he had a vast quote library saved up which is sitting on my bookshelf, and I do borrow from it occasionally. My father taught about industrial Safety and Loss Control and was, in his day, considered the leading authority in the field. He lectured in most parts of the world and often spent months teaching, for example, in South Africa to mine safety folks or in the Philippines or Australia. I went to a lecture many years back when we had an affiliation with Georgia State University and held many of his courses on campus or nearby. This course was in, I think, the Downtown Ramada Inn, and I stepped in to watch the master at work.

He was lecturing about a topic, and to make a point, he got down in a football three-point stance and said hike and charged up the next yard or so of carpet. My father was a lineman in college and even in his sixties was pretty imposing. He lowered and raised his booming voice. He used many learning tricks we teachers still use to help his classes remember ideas. A famous one in safety is ISMEC. Identify, set standards, measure, evaluate, and correct or commend a simple acronym and it became a mainstay of Loss Control management.

I recall another idea from my father when he visited a plant; the first place he went was the maintenance shop. He would talk to the supervisor and ask where they saw issues. I was always amused at how many safety guys would question my father about this tactic. He responded that this was ground zero for knowing where potential major loss will occur. In the maintenance shop, doing repairs, for example, repeatedly for a specific shift or piece of equipment will indicate a potential problem waiting to hit.

I started thinking that this could apply in a school. Several possibilities for what teacher writes most referrals for seemingly inconsequential reasons? You cannot teach by referral. Look at remedial classes; are there similarities with kids who are there? Did they have the same teacher? Did they come from the same school? What is their life at home? Far too often in education we start at the top and go down. I have found the gifted kids, even without a teacher, will do great. I am somewhat sarcastic.

As I am reading Kozol’s book and now interested in looking at others of his, I am sure I will be borrowing ideas, but I would like to leave today with this idea: should we start at the bottom or the top in trying to solve educational problems? I am no closer to finding the solution to how we tell a great teacher, but maybe some food for thought. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and always give thanks. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird