On building

When I sit and talk with some of my teacher colleagues that I admire most I am struck, at times, by how uncomplicated their advice is for teaching well.

As teachers and as caring human beings they have the desire that I think is present in most people to share the skills of their craft with others. These lessons are frequently anti-climactic or disappointingly simple in nature, at times being little more than platitudes. This is because, I think, what is most real and wonderful about their teaching comes from within.

Something that cannot be expressed through lecture is made manifest through their lessons. It must be felt to be known and, while it's not entirely clear to me where it comes from, it seems to be a profound inner strength and sincere love for what they do and for whom they serve.

All the training manuals and seminars and acronym-laden rubrics in the world may help build structure to teaching but that structure must be built upon a solid foundation of something one cannot acquire through a Ministry of Education conference.

So where the hell do I find it?

And all around the smell of rain

I walked home today feeling very confused. The type of confusion that leaves you without any sort of base from which to start. Even if the base was only of clay or mud at least then you could sculpt a castle or a tiny mud dog and pretend that you had something concrete. But I didn't have that base and the mud dog was off somewhere probably chewing on the resolution to my confusion.

So I tried to make a list of people who I felt comfortable giving me a not-chewed answered. The list didn't satisfy me. I tried to think about it differently - we need to reframe the question in order to know to whom we ought address it!

I couldn't formulate the question.

By this point there was an intense feeling of frustration - but who was feeling it was unclear, where it was being felt was mysterious, and why it was met with a response of amusement and from whom was entirely unknown.

And then the wind woke me. I looked up and caught the moon giggling at me through the late-day clouds and all around the smell of rain.

On my teachers

As I snapped a candid picture of a young woman in Bratislava, one of the girls I was sightseeing with said with a giggle, "Uh-oh! Someone's falling in love!"

I explained to her in my most adult tone that "love" really didn't enter as a motivation, I simply preferred such shots as they catch the person in a moment as they are and not as they present themselves to be. Her following nod and quick jump to a new subject confirmed my suspicions that I had successfully and masterfully used the very adult skill of delivering a bit of a truth in an incredibly untruthful way as to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. Ahh, growing up!

This leads us to two conclusions:
1. I am awesome.
2. The world better watch out when that girl discovers just how smart she is.

I did have some feelings for the girl in the photo that I would have enjoyed following up on had the circumstances been different. Though romantics might decry me, I think whatever I felt will have to be likened to the brief moment of shared recognition that sometimes occurs between riders on oppositely departing subway trains. By the time it takes hold of you her train is leaving, you're looking for a seat that is not near the crazy raving man in the corner and, always, the faint smell of urine. Still, it's nice to know there are those kinds of people out there. Like her, I mean. Not the crazy pee-soaked guy.

This post isn't really about her, though. It's about the little girl who called me out. Of all the people I joked and flirted with, smiled at and made moderately inappropriate comments to, the young woman in the photo was the only one who apparently provoked a response from me that was interpreted as anything more than silly Americanism. Moreover, I was expressing things that I was fairly confident I had hidden. Moreover than that, this girl was the only one who picked it up and decided it was worth verbalizing to me.

But the truth has a way of finding its way through. I would not be at all surprised to be told that the girl didn't buy a word of what I was selling but thought it best to let the unrequited young man hide in his justifications. Why am I so consistently thwarted by 14 year olds? Her understanding of and care for others has been inspirational most of the adults that have worked with her and really makes me wonder about the teacher / student relationship. I think it's very likely that we have fooled those poor saps into thinking that they are learning, we are teaching, and the relationship gets no more dynamic than that. But what is REALLY happening is that we have created a magnificently convincing set of lights, mirrors, and smoke machines that disguises us taking notes as they live and act in the honest ways that we have forgotten.

Many of the implications of this little lesson as clear on their face, some of them are less so and I'm not sure how to verbalize them. Some probably haven't occurred to me yet. In any case, teachers like these are what have made my time here so meaningful and what will make it so hard to leave.

Thanks, B.