I CAN ONLY TEACH WHO I AM
A few weeks ago I was blessed with a son. The feeling is great but the responsibility that comes with it is overwhelming. It may take my whole life to figure that out. For now i hold him every morning and give him a blessing. It is unfortunate that I even never remember if I was ever held or given the same blessings. I have begun to think through what I want him to learn from me. The more I think the more I wonder what life would have been if I had a proper relationship with my real dad. What lesson would I teach my son. How would I relate with him.
As I have come to know these few weeks, teaching has three important sources: The Subject, The student and The element of self. For success I believe that an in-depth understanding of these three is important.
1. THE SUBJECTS: What we teach are as large and complex as life itself, so our knowledge of them is always flawed and partial. No matter how we devote ourselves to reading and research, teaching requires a command of content that always eludes our grasp.
2. THE STUDENTS: Those we teach are also larger than life and even more complex. To see them clearly and see them whole, and respond to them wisely in the moment, requires a lot more than we are prepared to take but bring great measures of achievement.
If students and subjects accounted for all the complexities of teaching, our standard ways of coping would do – all the great schools in Uganda will have attained it all. We would be keeping up with our fields as best we can, and learn enough techniques to stay ahead of the student psyche.
3. THE ELEMENT OF SELF - TEACHING WHO WE ARE. This gives the third but more important complexity that is normally over looked - we teach who we are. Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. Look at football and see the life of Drogba who plays with a passion or look at Nadal – playing tennis like he created the game. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than a demonstration of my inner life – this is why integrity becomes important.
To this regard if you are willing to look in that mirror, and not run from what you see, then you have a chance to gain self-knowledge -- and knowing self is as crucial to good teaching as knowing your students and subject.
In fact, knowing my students and my subject depends heavily on self-knowledge. When I do not know myself, I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life -- and when I cannot see them clearly I cannot teach them well. When I do not know myself, I cannot know my subject -- not at the deepest levels of embodied, personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance, a congeries of concepts as far removed from the world as I am from personal truth.
We need to open a new frontier in our exploration of good teaching: the inner landscape of a teacher's life. For proper understanding the importance of understanding self there are three important paths which to me also govern the teaching profession: Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual
When we reduce teaching to intellect and it becomes a cold abstraction; reduce it to emotions and it becomes such a waste of time; reduce it to the spiritual and it loses its anchor to the world – people who life is some kind of space day dreaming about how things ought to be.
Intellect, emotion, and spirit depend on each other for wholeness which is to me related to teaching with integrity. These three are interwoven in the human self and in education at its best, and we need to interweave them in our pedagogical discourse as well.
1. INTELLECTUAL means the way we think about teaching and learning. We are privileged that through our schools the forms that learning has taken has not just been intellectual. That is why Educating for Character takes a very important and central point in our teaching. The form and content of our concepts of how people know and learn, of the nature of our students and our subjects and where we intend them to end up in life is important.
2. EMOTIONAL means the way we and our students feel as we teach and learn. We all know that emotions are dependent on feelings that can either enlarge or diminish the exchange between us. Note that in Cornerstone our emphasis are not just on the emotional relations between the students. The feeling of love is dependent on commitment
3. SPIRITUAL refers to the diverse ways we answer the heart's longing to be connected with the largeness of life or to eternity or to God for lack of a better and sensitive way of stating it. This longing brings us to a point were we see our work with love and connect a deeper meaning to what we are doing.
Understanding that “we teach who we are” draws a line between being just another hired hand and being a partner in the mission. The basis is in knowing self being true to it – issues of integrity are therefore important and can never be denied.
TEACHING BEYOND TECHNIQUE
When you all went to the school of education I am sure you were taught and examined on some basic ways of teaching But today I also want to add to what you have learnt things that I believe are key to the profession of teaching: my identity, my selfhood, my sense of this "I" who teaches -- without which I have no sense of the "Thou" who learns. These are the three things you carry with you: identity, selfhood and I who teachers ignoring thou who learns.
Here is a secret hidden in plain sight: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. You will find that your ability to connect with students, and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods used than on the degree to which you know and trust your selfhood.
TEACHING AND TRUE SELF
First – true self is your integrity – it is what your class carries on after you have gone past. It could just be moments shared with student that will always be in your memory. The claim that good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher might sound like a truism, something that is far fetched. Good teaching comes from good people. But by "identity" and "integrity" I do not mean only our noble features, or the good deeds we do, or the brave faces we wear to conceal our confusions and complexities. Identity and indeed integrity has as much to do with our shadows and limits, our wounds and fears, as with our strengths and potentials.
1. Identity: means the quality of being the same in all that constitute the objective reality of separate things; forces that constitute you life: my genetic makeup, to take it so a deeper level your identity constitute the nature of the man and woman who gave me life – the nature of God. It could also be the culture in which one was raised, people who have sustained me and people who have done me harm, the good and ill I have done to others, and to myself, the experience of love and suffering -- and much, much more. In the midst of that complex field, identity is a moving intersection of the inner and outer forces that make me who I am, converging in the irreducible mystery of being human.
2. Integrity: means whatever wholeness I am able to find within life and teaching has its vectors form and re-form the pattern of my life when there is no one around. Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not being true to self and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.
A few weeks ago I was blessed with a son. The feeling is great but the responsibility that comes with it is overwhelming. It may take my whole life to figure that out. For now i hold him every morning and give him a blessing. It is unfortunate that I even never remember if I was ever held or given the same blessings. I have begun to think through what I want him to learn from me. The more I think the more I wonder what life would have been if I had a proper relationship with my real dad. What lesson would I teach my son. How would I relate with him.
As I have come to know these few weeks, teaching has three important sources: The Subject, The student and The element of self. For success I believe that an in-depth understanding of these three is important.
1. THE SUBJECTS: What we teach are as large and complex as life itself, so our knowledge of them is always flawed and partial. No matter how we devote ourselves to reading and research, teaching requires a command of content that always eludes our grasp.
2. THE STUDENTS: Those we teach are also larger than life and even more complex. To see them clearly and see them whole, and respond to them wisely in the moment, requires a lot more than we are prepared to take but bring great measures of achievement.
If students and subjects accounted for all the complexities of teaching, our standard ways of coping would do – all the great schools in Uganda will have attained it all. We would be keeping up with our fields as best we can, and learn enough techniques to stay ahead of the student psyche.
3. THE ELEMENT OF SELF - TEACHING WHO WE ARE. This gives the third but more important complexity that is normally over looked - we teach who we are. Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. Look at football and see the life of Drogba who plays with a passion or look at Nadal – playing tennis like he created the game. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than a demonstration of my inner life – this is why integrity becomes important.
To this regard if you are willing to look in that mirror, and not run from what you see, then you have a chance to gain self-knowledge -- and knowing self is as crucial to good teaching as knowing your students and subject.
In fact, knowing my students and my subject depends heavily on self-knowledge. When I do not know myself, I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life -- and when I cannot see them clearly I cannot teach them well. When I do not know myself, I cannot know my subject -- not at the deepest levels of embodied, personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance, a congeries of concepts as far removed from the world as I am from personal truth.
We need to open a new frontier in our exploration of good teaching: the inner landscape of a teacher's life. For proper understanding the importance of understanding self there are three important paths which to me also govern the teaching profession: Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual
When we reduce teaching to intellect and it becomes a cold abstraction; reduce it to emotions and it becomes such a waste of time; reduce it to the spiritual and it loses its anchor to the world – people who life is some kind of space day dreaming about how things ought to be.
Intellect, emotion, and spirit depend on each other for wholeness which is to me related to teaching with integrity. These three are interwoven in the human self and in education at its best, and we need to interweave them in our pedagogical discourse as well.
1. INTELLECTUAL means the way we think about teaching and learning. We are privileged that through our schools the forms that learning has taken has not just been intellectual. That is why Educating for Character takes a very important and central point in our teaching. The form and content of our concepts of how people know and learn, of the nature of our students and our subjects and where we intend them to end up in life is important.
2. EMOTIONAL means the way we and our students feel as we teach and learn. We all know that emotions are dependent on feelings that can either enlarge or diminish the exchange between us. Note that in Cornerstone our emphasis are not just on the emotional relations between the students. The feeling of love is dependent on commitment
3. SPIRITUAL refers to the diverse ways we answer the heart's longing to be connected with the largeness of life or to eternity or to God for lack of a better and sensitive way of stating it. This longing brings us to a point were we see our work with love and connect a deeper meaning to what we are doing.
Understanding that “we teach who we are” draws a line between being just another hired hand and being a partner in the mission. The basis is in knowing self being true to it – issues of integrity are therefore important and can never be denied.
TEACHING BEYOND TECHNIQUE
When you all went to the school of education I am sure you were taught and examined on some basic ways of teaching But today I also want to add to what you have learnt things that I believe are key to the profession of teaching: my identity, my selfhood, my sense of this "I" who teaches -- without which I have no sense of the "Thou" who learns. These are the three things you carry with you: identity, selfhood and I who teachers ignoring thou who learns.
Here is a secret hidden in plain sight: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. You will find that your ability to connect with students, and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods used than on the degree to which you know and trust your selfhood.
TEACHING AND TRUE SELF
First – true self is your integrity – it is what your class carries on after you have gone past. It could just be moments shared with student that will always be in your memory. The claim that good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher might sound like a truism, something that is far fetched. Good teaching comes from good people. But by "identity" and "integrity" I do not mean only our noble features, or the good deeds we do, or the brave faces we wear to conceal our confusions and complexities. Identity and indeed integrity has as much to do with our shadows and limits, our wounds and fears, as with our strengths and potentials.
1. Identity: means the quality of being the same in all that constitute the objective reality of separate things; forces that constitute you life: my genetic makeup, to take it so a deeper level your identity constitute the nature of the man and woman who gave me life – the nature of God. It could also be the culture in which one was raised, people who have sustained me and people who have done me harm, the good and ill I have done to others, and to myself, the experience of love and suffering -- and much, much more. In the midst of that complex field, identity is a moving intersection of the inner and outer forces that make me who I am, converging in the irreducible mystery of being human.
2. Integrity: means whatever wholeness I am able to find within life and teaching has its vectors form and re-form the pattern of my life when there is no one around. Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not being true to self and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.
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