Artisans are experts, creative and caring - so are teachers. That's why this school has changed how it refers to staff


In early 2019 we made the decision to start referring to our staff not as teachers, but artisans.
This was something I had been thinking about for some time because we wanted to show our staff and the wider community that we knew the work they did was more than just "teaching" in the traditional sense – reading from textbooks, rote learning, funnelling students through exams – and was something far more meaningful and valuable.

Teachers are artisans

The word "artisan" fitted perfectly, for the following three criteria:

1. They are experts in their craft
Great teachers are not something that can be easily replaced by a machine, and their skill set can't be quickly learned by someone else. Our outstanding teachers engage on a human level, for example through guided inquiry and debate, which creates a far richer learning experience.

They have deep subject knowledge, continually improve their craft and are adaptable to new challenges at a moment’s notice – as this year has shown especially.

2. They are creative
They teach complex subjects in a way that is engaging, enlightening, challenging and memorable.
They adapt curricula and find ways to teach that match the ethos we strive for at our school, as well as responding to the contemporary context – rather than simply rehashing the same lesson each year, for example.

3. They are caring
They care for their pupils and see them as more than data points in a spreadsheet for grades or exam results.
They work with each student as an individual, wanting to see them succeed for that child’s specific development, and they craft the right learning environment to achieve this.

Universal talents

Of course, any teacher reading this should rightly say, "I have these skills." After all, a teacher anywhere in the world must be an expert in what they do, be creative in how they teach and care for their pupils.

I fear, though, that sometimes, in the metric-driven focus of much of the world’s schooling, this view of what a teacher is and the importance of their skills is overlooked or lost.
That is why I wanted to ensure that our staff knew we saw them as having a skill set that merited being referred to as an artisan.

Why this matters

We can see the world over that technology is changing many industries – mostly notable through automation and AI.
And we know that in a world where these technologies became ever more advanced, it would be possible to envision a world that sees the human teachers as a luxury asset – the mostly costly part of delivering education.

But I deeply believe that no system will be able to replace the learning experience provided by artisan teachers.

As such, we wanted to take an active step to cultivate this concept now – to show that what our staff do is not something that can be replicated by a machine but is a craft and skill set beyond replication.

How was it received?

Most staff were quickly on board and adapted to being referred to as artisans or artisan teachers, although there were some who took longer to come around to the idea.

Indeed, I had one artisan who emailed back and said they didn’t want the term on their email signature, not seeing it as right for their role. But I said they absolutely were an artisan and outlined why. I think, over time, all staff have now become comfortable with it – or see it as a badge of honour.

Parents have started to refer to the teachers they engage with in this way, too, and they like the differentiation that it gives.

It can cause momentary confusion for prospective parents when we tell them they will meet the artisans on a school tour, and they say, "We’d rather meet the teachers." But this is easily explained and quickly becomes natural to them, too.

And the students? Well, they still refer to teachers as Mr or Mrs, so that has not been a big change.

How did we make the change?

We made the change slowly, introducing it to our website, brochures, internal communications and email signatures whenever the need to update something arose, rather than introducing it in one overnight change.

This meant there was time for staff and the wider community to experience the change slowly and to get used to it. It also meant that, if there were any changes needed to existing marketing information or business cards, for example, we could deal with them as they arose, rather than trying to do everything all at once.

All this has made it a smooth and welcome change – and I think an important one.

And our artisans like it, too.

Bernhard Gademann is the director general of Institut auf dem Rosenberg in Switzerland

Why we call teachers artisans at our school | Tes News