Teaching is a noun. A gerund, I think. It’s not a verb even though it often behaves like one. Teaching isn’t do-able in the same way that writing, or playing music, or washing dishes is because doing it (teaching) isn’t the same as getting it done. Teaching isn’t the reciprocal of learning.

Teaching and learning are only incidentally related. Once you’ve committed an act of teaching, you can’t know for sure if anything else happened. Remote sensing of events on Mars is more accurate than figuring out whether your objectives were met. The phrase, “I’m going to teach you a lesson” means that someone is going to try to effect a change in the point of view of someone else, to make a believer out of somebody. But the teacher can’t ever be sure. That kind of teaching is an imposition of power. Teaching truly is merely a condition of being. It’s the condition of being an interested person. It’s about relationship.

Teaching is a process. Day after day I spend time with students and try to understand what they know, how they feel, what they want, and who they are because those are things that regulate learning. I pick up clues. It’s detective work, piecing the stories together. Nobody tells me what’s important. They think I must know already, or they don’t want me to know because they’re afraid I might not like what I see. I’m responsible for inquiring. I create a feedback loop and insert myself into it. Conversation works best. I modify what I do based on the stream of data I receive. I become a learner and a problem solver. Sometimes there’s damage to repair. I have to get close-in to see that. I have to care enough to find out and try to untangle the knots or whatever it takes. That part of the job is often tricky and delicate. Teaching is getting to know my students and helping them believe that they’re worth knowing.

Teaching is a calling, and it’s not for everyone. Become a teacher and countless indignities will soon be yours. If you’re a parent you know all about this. When I hear that little Jason or Tanya needs a man-teacher I think, “Great!…What is it this time?” But I don’t say anything like that because I can’t say what I think when I think it. No, I save stuff up and say it out of context where nobody will take it personal. I hope. Being a model for half the human race is too much responsibility for me. My voice is too loud, or I’m too rough, or too loose, or too strict, or too scary, or my classroom isn’t colorful enough, or any number of unpleasant things to keep me from being be everybody’s ideal. I’m constantly challenged to be a better person than I want to be. I didn’t choose the job. It fell to me and I couldn’t dodge it. I answered a call.

Teaching is an art. An artist exercises his imagination. He makes his vision real. He bears witness to possibilities that would otherwise remain unexpressed. An artist needs skills and craftsmanship, certainly. But there’s more to creating art than technical talent, and there’s more to teaching than method. Skill is only a starting point. My imagination is challenged to find the middle path, the path that threads the line between authority and freedom, between convention and originality, between rigor and license. As a teacher I challenge myself to realize the possible, to preserve what’s sacred, and to know which is which.

Teaching is leadership. Set an example. Learners work from the model. I remember a poem by Gary Snyder called Axe Handles in which he recalled a phrase from long ago, “When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off.” He’s right. I am an axe, making handles. How like us they become.

Note:This entry was inspired by Meg Spohn’s Writing Manifesto, which blew me away. I took it upon myself to see what would happen if I tackled a similar project. Any similarities between the two pieces are due to my great respect for the model.