Slivers of Perfection

by Clayton Glasgow (ACE 31, Cleveland)
ACE Teaching Fellows

Clayton Glasgow (middle with blue button down and blue tie) talking to students on left (male in red sweater) and right (female in blue polo) or him. They are at a lab table looking at a worksheet on the table.

A few days ago, there was an incident in my classroom that I did not handle very well. On the contrary, I handled it quite poorly, and I ended up making a student’s already-difficult day even worse. This interaction was a humbling reminder that, even on the precipice of graduating from ACE, I am still far from being the perfect teacher that I strive to be.

Becoming the perfect teacher is, of course, impossible. Even the most experienced teachers won’t claim to have it all figured out. But, as Wendell Berry recently reminded me in his book The Unsettling of America, perfection is the standard we must set for ourselves. He writes that perfection is 

what we hope and strive for. And it is the way we understand our effort…we must have the vision of perfection, we must strive for it, we must sense the possibility of approaching it, or we cannot live. Jesus enjoined his followers to be perfect—not, I think, because they could hope for perfection, but because perfection is the necessary standard. People cannot understand themselves, or live fully and humanly, without it. To reconcile ourselves to imperfection, to place great practical barriers in our own way, is brutish. It condemns us immediately to great suffering of spirit and undoubtedly, in the long run, of the body as well (Berry 208).

Two students (female in red sweatshirt on left and male in black puffer jacket on right) posing for a photo with the female student holding an egg. Both students are giving a thumbs up to the camera
Two students after a perfectly imperfect egg lab

As ACE teachers, our standard is perfection because to strive for anything less would be a disservice to the students whose learning has been entrusted to our care. Our students deserve our fullest attention, deepest patience, most creative effort, and most authentic love. Yet the reality of teaching and of being human is that perfection cannot be sustained. We all lose patience. We all mishandle situations. We all fall short of being the teachers we hope to be. 

But while becoming the perfect teacher is impossible, being the perfect teacher for a moment is not. 

There are moments—slivers of perfection—that gleam through the imperfection of everyday teaching. A conversation with a struggling student lands exactly as it needs to. A lesson suddenly comes alive with curiosity and joy. A student who usually hides in the back raises a hand. In these moments, however fleeting, we become the teachers we aspire to be.

These slivers are gifts, but they are also signs. They remind us that perfection, though unattainable in its fullness, is still worth pursuing. And over time, through repetition, reflection, and grace, these moments become more frequent.

But if perfection is the standard, failure is the process. Striving for perfection inevitably leads to failure—sometimes of epic proportions—because it requires us to extend beyond the familiar into the realm of the yet-to-be-tried. And it is in this failure that we begin, ever so slowly, to sense the possibility of approaching perfection. When new activities, instructional strategies, seating arrangements, or start-of-class procedures don’t work as anticipated, reflection reveals what went wrong—and new ideas of what can be done to make it right. 

Try. Fail. Grow. Try again. Repeat. 

ACE Cleveland in red ACE t-shirts (with Glasgow in a Tow Mater t-shirt) posing for the camera after a basketball game. From left to right: Marcello Nanni, Cat Darcy, Clayton Glasgow, Kristen O'Sullivan, Grace Shean, and Ashley Utnage)
The ACE Cleveland community that makes it easy to share failures with each other

This cycle is only possible because we do not undertake it alone. Christ the Teacher is our model not only because of his perfection, but because of his generosity of grace and forgiveness. In having Christ as our model, we trust that our failures are not final. And alongside that grace stands the support of our communities: colleagues who offer advice after difficult classes, mentors who remind us that growth takes time, ACE classmates who understand the exhaustion of teaching because they are living it too. When we fail, we are surrounded by people ready to help us try again. 

With less than two weeks left as an ACE teacher, I am still failing, which, I think, is a good thing. It means I’m still striving toward something greater, and it’s a reminder that I have much yet to learn. But when I look back on these two years of teaching, I can see, sprinkled throughout, slivers of perfection that still glisten. And those slivers are enough to remind me that perfection, though out of reach, is always worth pursuing.