Head of School Joe Puggelli was recently quoted on TheApple.com in a segment titled, What it Takes to Be a Great Teacher:

"The best educators understand that the role of the teacher is not to be the star but to make stars of the kids. He or she will re-define the idea of 'teacher' to include the roles of 'coach' and 'mentor.'

A coach knows that the first rule of coaching kids – whether you’re a math coach or a physics coach or an English coach – is to know your kid as a person first and as a student second. If the kid knows that you care, he will care what you know. And a coach is capable of breaking down material into component parts that a kid can understand and assimilate and then use to change behavior. And, if you know your kid, you can communicate this material in the style that will work for the individual kid, no matter what the learning style.

A teacher by this definition might well become a mentor, a role that a school cannot assign because it is the kid who confers the role on the teacher. The best definition of a mentor that I ever heard came from a kid: “A mentor will kick your butt when you need it, will have faith in you when you need someone who is not your mom or your dad to have faith in you, will not put up with your BS-ing other people, and, most importantly, will not put up with your BS-ing yourself.”