Once upon a time I considered being a geek one of two things. You could be a sci-fi geek and have a weird encyclopaedic knowledge on everything to do with Star Wars (and an obsession with 7 of 9), OR you could be a computer geek that could hijack the internet and do cool things with coding which I didn’t understand. In fairness, I think I was quite young when I thought this, and certainly my appreciation and understanding of geekness is more sophisticated now.

In fact, I have ‘geek’ as part of my twitter bio – this was not self-depreciating. I know in films the geek is often a much-maligned character, but I have witnessed a rise of geek chic; it is in fact, hip to be square in fashion, films and the media at large.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Move over, the meek; the geeks have been inheriting the earth for quite some time. In my lifetime, archetypal geeks such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have changed the way that we connect and work beyond all recognition. The Internet has revolutionised every aspect of life from shopping, to relationships, to teaching. The geek as master of accomplishment and knowledge can be recognised in fields such as the arts, technology, and any area of professionalism that requires creativity and practice in pursuit of knowledge.

Think of the focus and drive of an Olympic athlete – I believe that resilience and drive is a characteristic central to being a geek. Perhaps geekery can be found in continued practice? The muscle memory of a concert pianist, born of hours of dedicated and deliberate, practice shows the dedication of a geek. Geekery, far from anything to be derided, should be celebrated and nurtured in our young people.

So ask yourself this: Who should be the ones to encourage our young people to develop and display traits of desiring extensive knowledge in certain fields? Never mind hipsters with oversized beards, ironic t-shirts and typewriters in Starbucks – the kind of mentor I am talking about is savvy, successful and probably teaching in a school near you. Teachers are, in fact, uber-geeks. Passionate pedagogues demonstrated by some of the responses to an enquiry on Twitter as to if geeks make the best teachers:

‘Woah!’, I hear you cry, thinking back to your own school days. I bet you are thinking that Mr Clenchbottom who taught you PE wasn’t a geek. I concur; at the time I saw athletic verve as sadism too. However, as a grown-up I have been really staggered by the professional zeal and enthusiasm displayed on the #PEGeeks Twitter hashtag. Apologies to PE teachers everywhere, but the complexities of the subject in terms of complex anatomical and biological knowledge was totally lost on me as a child. Plus, as seen above, teachers are reclaiming the word geek as being a positive thing.

Think deeper. A geek is someone who has supreme knowledge on a subject matter. Yep – that certainly sounds a lot like my physics teacher from my younger days, for example, or even like some of the pedagogical blogs that I now read to improve my own teaching practice. Knowledge is a hugely important part of being a geek.

However, pure geekery also implies an innate enthusiasm for the subject and a commitment to explaining it and sparking that love in others. Doubt this, and I would encourage you to ask a Doctor Who fan to tell you about their favourite Time Lord, or ask an English teacher about their favourite book. Geeks want to enthuse others with a love of their subject. This is what we need in our schools; teachers who are committed to sparking curiosity about their subject specialism, through passion and commitment to nurturing a love of that subject in our children.

Maybe a word of warning here: Could geeky teachers also do some harm in the classroom? A real geek with no emotional intelligence or developed people skills may not understand why others do not find the subject as fascinating as they do. I have only go to think back to some of the lessons in my NQT year, where I covered the board in scrawls of Hegelian dialectics to try and explain Marxism. Or when I was totally enthralled in Baudrillard’s concept of hyper-realism to realise that I had lost 99% of the class, and that they were less animated than the zombies in Shaun of the Dead (at least the zombies grunt…).

Also consider how frustrating it can be for a geek when someone cannot understand things they find easy to grasp. My Spanish teacher at school was guilty of this crime, and spent many hours telling me how easy the work was as I sat there bewildered and unable to make any sense of verb conjugations. She was a genuinely lovely lady, and I enjoyed her lessons, but she was continually shocked at how incomprehensible the language seemed to me.

It seems to me that simply being a geek isn’t enough to make you a good teacher. Simply having knowledge isn’t enough to magically transport it into the brains of those around us. Being a truly gifted teacher requires those special skills to spark a love of learning in children – this might not be subject specific content, but is simply a broad and deep curiosity about the world around us.

I would like to think that my geekiness is a part of what makes me a good teacher, but I’m certainly more proud about the time and care that I can show my learners to help develop them as people beyond my classroom walls.

Would you consider yourself a geek? Let us know in the comments.