The important thing about teaching is engaging my students, in class, in their surroundings, and in themselves. There are other important things--like cooperative learning, IEPs, instructional technology, ALICE, the Marzano 9, GRIT, and disciplinary literacy. Then, there are the unimportant things, like counting tardies and colleague-to-colleague drama and the turn-rounding-on button in TeacherVue. But the important thing about teaching is engaging students because lesson plans, communities, and self-actualization are unrealized without their engagement.