"The test of a good teaccher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer."
- Alice Wellington Rollins
Sometimes, it can be overwhelming to think that as a teacher, you have to know everything. It is possible to know A LOT, and it is important to brush up on your knowledge of the topic you are teaching. But information is always changing, so to know EVERYTHING is a tall order.
And in the striving to KNOW everything, sometimes, it is easy to forget to be yourself. It is okay to admit when you DON'T know, and to show your students that you are human too. In doing this, you can model how to be an authentic person to your students. An "I dont' know" doesn't necessarily mean you are a bad teacher, or don't know anything. It can be turned into, "I don't know that answer, but why don't we try to find it out together."
In this way, you as a teacher can take your students through the process of learning with you, and you can teach them how to solve problems, and how to come to their own answers, and perhaps most important, how to be a person of integrity- honest, caring and real.
There are teachers who might know A LOT, but are not teaching from their hearts. Or they never really show their students who they really are. I remember first learning that teaching is an act... I read books on teaching that explained how teachers are actors, playing a role, playing a part. But the ironic thing is that I think the teachers who have inspired me the most are the ones who shared their real selves with us as students. And I think some of the best days I've had teaching are the ones when I opened up my real self to my students, and they were able to connect to me as a person.
Because isn't that essentially what we want to teach and model to students? How to be real, how to find your own connection to whatever it is you are learning, and how to make that learning your own? How can students find this if the teacher himself is disconnected to his own self in front of his students?
"TEACHING
When you've mastered all the methods
Penetrated all the ways,
Where in those who were successful
Justified their claim to praise...
Very precious the possession
Of the technique and the art,
But you cannot substitute it
for a sympathetic heart!
Learning will be useless lumber
If it does not make you see
That the verb "to know"is never
More important than 'to be'.
And take heed of what you're saying
For the pupil wiser far,
Will be thinking while you say it
Of the kind of person you are.
'Tis the understanding spirit,
'Tis the soul resolved to give,
'Tis the love behind the lesson,
That can make the lesson live.
Garner every bit of knowledge
As a miser does his pelf,
But remember that the core of
All your teaching is YOURSELF!"
-Denis A. McCarthy
(Posted at Fasil's Dance Studio- 8th Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets, Manhattan, New York)
