I have taught or I have been taught

I am not really sure that teaching is as much about the act of teaching as most people might think it is. (I am sure saying this will get me in trouble somehow, and there will be murmurings as I next enter class…but I will thank everyone now for falling into a hush as I arrive and just glaring at me when they don’t think I am paying attention.)

And, since most of the rest of what I write will be an attempt to dig myself out of the hole I have just placed myself in, I should probably qualify my statements a bit and hope to establish ethos in some small measure before I am done.

I have experienced teaching…mentoring, supervising, nefarious pedagogying and its ilk…from several different points of view in the past. I have taught, been taught, and still bare some of the scars from each.

I remember sitting through Mrs. Gray’s American History class, (yes, the names are changed, but I may have stumbled a bit when I tried to avoid making the names non-descriptive.)…correction, I remember failing Mrs. Gray’s American History class...rather spectacularly, I might add. Mrs. Gray taught her class by writing the days reading assignment on the board, sitting at her desk, and correcting papers oblivious to all else that went on around her. I’m fairly certain that she never even looked up at the class once she sat down, but can’t remember really caring enough to pay attention.

My performance in that class was the direct result of her performance as a teacher.

I also remember Mr. Imsocool who used his teaching position as a platform to impress the impressionable, and very-young, women that were his charge. (Don’t ask…it was a bad experience.)

And I remember teachers that have been excited about what I could learn from them, but I have been injunctioned against naming some of the more recent examples thereof. I will just point out that I think the important point is the “what I could learn from them” bit.

As far as teaching is concerned. There are two examples that I will mention, even though I am really trying to be brief about it. (Brevity is not my strongest skill.)

At one point in my life I taught English in a faraway place where…and the teachers among you might appreciate this…the students rose from their desks to stand respectfully beside them as I walked from the outside door to the front of the class, and greeted me with a well rehearsed “Good Morning Teacher”. While I, on the other hand, stood bemused at their strange other-worldly behavior trying to figure out how I was going to get them to sit down again so I could do my job. (The culture contributed a lot to the enthusiasm of my students in this case.)

I compare that order and respect to my current position, where I help guide the creative efforts of a group of neurotic, unstable, self-absorbed, people ready to lash out violently at any that might challenge the supremacy or validity of their work…um, you might have heard them being referred to as creative professionals—art directors, copywriters and such. My job is to guide them in a meaningful direction, and dodge the stray stapler that might accidentally fly in my direction…I may have mentioned the scars.

My vision of what teaching is has been formed by every one of these experiences. And, after all of that, my thought is that “TEACHING” doesn’t really seem to be about getting up in the morning and saying “today I will teach”, because teaching is a process, not an accomplishment. For me teaching is about helping someone else learn for themselves. And, (maybe this will help Chalice out a bit), sometimes being able to help someone understand how to ask the right questions is more important than knowing the answers to the questions.

Ok, I am certainly not drawing any conclusions here, it really just kind’a thinking out-loud…um, online. So I will end by asking if anyone else has thoughts on the subject. Do we define teaching as something that we cause to happen to someone else, or is it something that happens to us as learners?

“Today I have taught?”

or…

“Today I have been taught?”