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A serious question. How much of an accomplishment is it to be a part of these programs? How much better was I than the next biology teacher just because I wrote a more creative lesson plan? They didn’t see me teach. They didn’t ask my kids about me. They didn’t look at a portfolio of accumulated work over many years, they looked at a single lesson plan. Yet I was an Access Excellence Fellow-something to be proud of, but something to examine critically, and take it for what it was worth.

Ultimately, a career, and a lifetime in the service of others will not be measured by an accumulation of badges, but by those that you have served over those years, and their accomplishments.

“Textbooks have really great things, but they’re also very limiting,” said Underwood, who is in her 24th year of teaching at Olympia High. “Our kids are digital kids. They respond very well to this kind of tactile environment, where they can get immediate feedback.”

hasn’t used iPads because they don’t work with the district’s technology system

as well as a pilot program at Olympia High where students in an intensive college readiness course known as AVID were issued district-owned iPads to use throughout the year for note-taking, research and organization.

Go up to any adult with a good life, no matter what his or her station, and ask if a teacher made a difference, and you’ll always see a face light up. The human element, a magical connection, is at the heart of successful education, and you can’t bottle it.

My father would have been spat out by today’s test-driven educational regime.

Probe one of those illuminated faces further, and you can also usually elicit memories of a particularly bad teacher.