Tracey Barnett: Lessons in life no curriculum can cover

Standardised testing can't incorporate many of the most memorable schooling experiences. Picture / Rod Emmerson

Take a minute and, at random, pick three specific memories with teachers from your school years. Choose the first memories that come to mind. Try it before you read on.

Once you have those three moments in hand, ask yourself, why those choices? As an adult looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, what made those moments stay with you?

What did those few interactions give you as a person then and why does it still live in your memory today - even if it was negative?

Mine were immediate: A one-off substitute teacher who managed to enthral my rowdy Intermediate class with the most intriguing, real-life mystery we'd ever heard - called Watergate. As the bell sounded, we demanded to know the ending. Was Nixon lying? She answered simply, "Read tomorrow's newspaper."

I had no idea that the grey slab my parents buried their noses in each evening held stories and intrigue to unravel.

Another indelible image - a middle-aged, white, Greek-American English teacher standing on top of her desk in a fit of passion for poetry, shouting the words of black, gay, pre-civil rights poet Langston Hughes, "I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother!"

Enhanced by the weird mismatch of poet and presenter, you could have heard a pin drop as she climbed down.

The last isn't terribly pretty by today's standards: a biology teacher who would hand back papers in order from best to worst. I can still remember how it felt those few times when he would quietly put my paper face down on my desk first and say simply, "Miss Barnett."

This is the reality that every professional educator probably doesn't want to hear: in one hour, my Watergate substitute opened up the world for me more than any social studies teacher ever did in a dozen years of schooling. I never even knew her name.

Looking back today, I still admire my English teacher for showing me the congealed anger of another's world I didn't even know existed then - delivered with the passion to pound it home.

Yet, to be honest, I don't remember anything else she taught us that entire year.

And to my biology teacher, who could be called cruel by today's measure, he raised the bar. I had no idea then how much I wanted to jump higher.

Yet, I also remember the dispirited slump of kids staring at the floor waiting for their failing grade at the bottom of the pile.

Is this the definition of a good teacher? Probably not. None of those moments could be measured by a standardised test. You can't easily replicate them throughout a district, even if you wanted to. What might have been seminal for me was probably long forgotten by 25 other kids.

Research today shows that the most effective teaching superstars aren't who you think. According to the New York Times, among the factors that do not predict teacher success: a graduate school degree, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm or even having passed the teacher certification exam on the first try.

Indeed, Teach for America's studies found their elite teachers have very different traits in common; these teachers constantly re-evaluate what they're doing, plan exhaustively, maintain focus, have tremendous perseverance, and score high on "life satisfaction".

It's the holy grail of every administrator; how to build a better teacher. Undoubtedly, this is an admirable and necessary science - but one with an unspoken piece missing.

In every government's ongoing sprint to have students pass taller tests, where is our measure of a teacher's true impact decades later in life?

Many taught me how to be a better student. But the truth is, a teacher's ability to create academic success may be the last thing their students will value about the lesson they gave them in the course of a lifetime.

What is important in our third, fourth and fifth decades is not the success of the science of teaching, but the art of the person behind a handful of odd moments where the force of who that teacher is collided with who you were becoming.

In my case, it wasn't so much of a collision, but a synchronised spin - where only a couple of turns were worthy enough to stick. That may not be science as much as luck.

What I wish every teacher would remember, especially when they get buried with yet another measuring stick, is you roll a dice when you walk into that classroom.

Odds are, most of the time, the house will win. Those 30 faces staring back at you won't remember their day.

But if you are very, very lucky, your profession has the potential to provide something the rest of us will never touch in our career, the humbling possibility to help shape a life.

To Mrs Derdarian, Mr Anacker and a teacher whose name I never knew, you gave me more in a handful of 90-second interactions than most professions can dream of in a lifetime. Not a bad job - if you can pass the test.

www.traceybarnett.co.nz or Twitter @TraceyBarnett