As educators whose goals is to produce independent and critical thinkers, it’s important to consider where exactly the boundaries of our influence lie, which might be different from the equally important question of where those boundaries should lie. Before we can explore where the influence of teachers might end and where the independent thoughts, beliefs, and actions of students begin, we should remind ourselves that, whether or not we care to admit it, in the classroom, we are always teaching ourselves. For this reason and others, hiring “well” is an administration’s top priority. Teachers are, by default, the biggest influencers in the lives of students while students are in school.

Ideological movements are inherently conflicted enterprises of the emotional variety, since faith and optimism are oriented towards the future, while the condition in need of “fixing” persists inexorably in the present. Activists whose ostensible aim is to alleviate suffering in the present, ply their efforts fully knowing that ultimate success is often deferred and is certainly never promised. Such guilt must constitute a painful existence for the activist and for the reformer, so resigned as they are to an emotional sobriety, despite any buoyance they must, too, necessarily feel or project.

Like energy between electron levels or the transfer of heat from one room to another, information moves across differences. So, too, then, must education. Education occurs as an effect of contrast.

As educators, we cherish our time off—all those religious holidays, winter and spring breaks, and, of course, summer vacation. Teachers choose to spend the time in a variety of ways from visiting friends and family to traveling to far-off lands; from enrolling in courses they’ve always wanted to take to just relaxing on the backyard hammock catching up on long-neglected reading. Whatever the activity, most educators view the time as a chance to recharge their batteries for the next phase of the school year, which, at times, feels like a mad sprint without any water breaks. For many, vacation is the only chance to catch one’s breath. Needless to say, the last thing we feel like doing during our time off is teaching.