I expected to be writing more often than this by now. In the culture of the moment, it seems that everything is public, but I keep finding things that I want to say that I cannot share with the world. Things about my past that I cannot share because they are still too raw within me, and I cannot trust that I will say them with balanced wisdom. Things about my present that I am realizing are not yet mine to speak, because they are experiences shared with people with whom I am still building trust, or because I do not yet know how to speak about these moments and people without being trite. So, I’m not writing much.
The old saw from the lips of uncountable teachers is that they teach because it is in teaching that they learn – one of those humble-brag things we say to make it clear that we’re just like everyone else (but maybe just a little more intentional about it). The truth in the aphorism is that for the teacher willing to learn, there are usually opportunities in abundance. Learn about the topics we teach, but also humility, and humanity, and endurance, and patience, and kindness, and turning the other cheek, and forgiveness, and attentiveness to small victories, and the art of properly setting and managing expectations, and how there is no end to learning even when we think we have finally come to the end. And learning about ourselves.
As a teacher, I am still in the stage of learning far more than I am teaching. I’m not putting myself down, either. In the early days of a new setting, there is so much to learn about the context of one’s teaching. Every environment is unique, as is every learner. There is so much to take in, but even as that is happening we must begin to teach, out of the poverty of our immense limits. Everyone must always start, somewhere.
Brandon Woosley 