[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have never seen a standards or curriculum document that lists beauty as a learning outcome, but I have observed teachers whose every move reveals their sense of the aesthetic. I have known teachers who value and comment regularly upon the sense of wonder and beauty they perceive in books, art, nature, life. I have been present when a teacher, reading aloud, unapologetically shed tears and then went back to reread the words that brought the tears in the first place. And I have witnessed moments when children have discovered beauty.

—Ellin Keene

The Teacher You Want To Be: Essays About Children, Learning, and Teaching, edited by Matt Glover and Ellin Oliver Keene, is out now.