As educators, we are only as effective as what we know. If we

The words of Heidi Hayes Jacobs—“As educators, we are only as effective as what we know. If we have no working knowledge of what students studied in previous years, how can we build on their learning? If we have no insight into the curriculum in later grades, how can we prepare learners for future classes?”—speak with the quiet authority of timeless wisdom. Within them lies not only a truth about teaching, but about the very art of human growth. Education, she reminds us, is not a collection of isolated lessons, but a continuum of understanding, a great bridge built from the stones of the past toward the horizon of the future. The teacher who stands upon that bridge must see both where the student has been and where they are destined to go.

To teach without awareness of what came before is like trying to write a book beginning in the middle of a sentence. Knowledge is cumulative, and when it is disconnected, it loses its strength. A child who studies fractions without understanding whole numbers, or history without knowing the stories that shaped earlier eras, walks through fog instead of light. Jacobs calls upon educators to look beyond their narrow walls and see the greater tapestry of learning. For only when each teacher knows their place within that tapestry can the pattern of wisdom reveal itself fully.

This principle was known even to the ancients. In the academies of Athens, mentors such as Plato and Aristotle guided their pupils through stages of thought, each lesson rising from the foundations laid before it. The master did not merely speak of the present topic—he wove it into the fabric of all that had been taught. So too in the monastic schools of the Middle Ages, where scribes and scholars passed down their knowledge in a sacred chain of continuity, believing that wisdom must be handed forward like flame from torch to torch. The chain could not be broken, or the light itself would be lost.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs speaks also to the responsibility of foresight. To teach well is not only to know what was, but to prepare for what shall be. The wise educator is a gardener who plants seeds for a harvest they may never see. They study the soil of the past, yes, but they also anticipate the weather of the future—the demands, the changes, the skills yet to come. Without such vision, education becomes stagnant, a mere repetition of words with no direction or purpose.

The tragedy of modern education, as Jacobs hints, is often its fragmentation. Each teacher toils in their small field, unaware of what lies beyond their fence. Yet true teaching demands unity. The mathematician must understand how the scientist will build upon their work; the historian must know what lessons the philosopher will draw from the past. To be effective, the teacher must see not a subject, but a soul—a learner traveling a long and sacred road toward mastery.

There is a story of a wise monk who taught generations of novices. When asked why his pupils always surpassed him, he smiled and said, “Because I remembered the hands that taught me, and I imagined the eyes that would learn from them.” That, in essence, is Jacobs’s teaching. We are only as effective as what we know—not just of our subject, but of the journey of those we guide. To know the past and the future of one’s students is to honor both ancestry and destiny.

Let us take this wisdom as a commandment for all who instruct, lead, or mentor. Study what came before you; anticipate what comes after you. Speak not only to the minds of your students but to the story of their becoming. Seek harmony with your fellow teachers, that together you may form an unbroken chain of enlightenment. For when educators unite in shared knowledge, they become more than instructors—they become stewards of civilization’s memory and architects of its future.

In the end, Jacobs reminds us that teaching is not the act of filling vessels, but of building bridges—bridges from ignorance to insight, from the past to the future, from the known to the possible. And the strength of every bridge depends on its connections. Thus, the teacher who learns both what was taught and what is yet to be taught becomes not only effective, but eternal—a living link in the endless chain of learning that binds all generations together.