Bingo. I wrote an article here on Medium about metaphors, specifically why it's important to know your metaphor for yourself as a teacher, what teaching is, and who (or what?) are students. Many people I ask about this think I'm stupid. Who cares a fig about metaphors, they basically tell me, I just come in and do my job everyday. Teachers have gotten very belligerent toward me, possibly because they've treated children as numbers or some other dehumanizing metaphor for a long time and simply don't want to admit it. But metaphors matter. They'll capture your stance toward students in your classroom. Case in point: if a teacher can look herself in the mirror every morning before going to work and say, "My students are (fill in the blank) not numbers on a spread sheet," I guarantee consciousness will shift and attitudes will change and REAL reform will start happening.