@Davecormier I was interested to read this as I had already seen reference to your previous post at #fedwikihappening and I wanted to post something there about caring (and thanks to David Wiley for that excellent Nell Noddings ref).
Teachers are expected to be and do all sorts of things, often within constraining systems. Reform is an attractive prospect but often leads to more of the same. Deficit models of students’ attitudes and competences are worthy but likely to be of little interest to students. So I thought I would throw in a couple of links that look at things differently.
One of the things that teachers can do is inspire students to do something, make a change, whatever . There is no standard model for inspiration, and it doesn’t necessarily need teachers to be ‘liked’ as these personal stories show http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/23/10-inspiring-teachers-as-nominated-by-our-readers.
A few years ago I took part in a project called Purpos/ed organised by Doug Belshaw – you can browse through the variety of purposes here http://web.archive.org/web/20130821155343/http://purposed.org.uk/
My own post included this
What is education? I refer you to the stained glass window above see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_%28Chittenden_Memorial_Window or my interpretation that it is an activity involving serious angels and though which light can shine.
Looking at what learners think about teachers and what teachers think about education is just as important as thinking about change and technology. Change in people can be emergent from experience rather than determined.