Teaching Adages, Revisited

In an earlier post this month, I mentioned a quotation that my school adopted for a short time to delineate the responsibilities of teacher and student: Teachers open the door, but students must pass through on their own. Back when that adage was hanging on my wall, I thought that it was a fair description of what our task is as teachers, but I don't believe so anymore.

To me, teaching and learning can never be mutually exclusive. No matter what I may be doing in my classroom, if my students are not learning, I can't call my actions "teaching." You can bet I'm trying really, really, really hard to teach, but without that learning thing, I'm not quite meeting the mark. I once read an example of this concept. If I try to teach my dog to sit on command, but she doesn't do it, can I fairly say I've taught her? No.

So what is teaching then? Where's the metaphor that best describes it? Another proverb that is often posted on classroom walls is Teaching is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. I like that one a little bit more; I like the image of igniting that passion for learning in the hope that it will continue burning after you're gone. It seems to put all the onus on the teacher, though. Where's the student in that one?

Anyway. After some serious thought, the adage that I currently favor to explain my philosophy of teaching is this one: When the student is ready, the master will appear.

I imagine my colleagues wondering what our responsibility is to students who are not ready. As public school teachers, we cannot choose our students, and neither can we change them, so I suppose in response I would say that we must do our best to be the teachers our students are ready for.

Therefore, I believe it is my responsibility to frame my instruction in terms of what my students want and need to know about their writing and reading right now, to be relevant and responsive to them, so that even if I am not personally the master they are ready for, I can help them to find the mentor they need. Who knows? Their "master" may be a book or a poem or another student-- it is whatever resource that they can use to better communicate the message they want to deliver. How can they not be ready for that?