"I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
You teach because it makes you feel alive. For most of your adolescence you were in love with the idea of being a teacher. You worked with students that others had forsaken. You watched as they went from F's to A's, as they began to believe in themselves and only needed you for company or an occasional high-five. In exchange they taught you about a world which existed far beyond your own. You were in love with teaching and teaching seemed to love you back. But one day you had a bad fight with the school system; hurtful things were said, your faith was deeply wounded and you broke up. You thought for good. While you mourned the end of this relationship you began to redefine yourself. You were no longer the school system's girlfriend. You stood on your own. And little questions became big questions: If you could not get along with the schools system then how could you be a teacher? And if you were not a teacher than who were you? These questions bled into other questions: what if schooling and education were simply not the same thing? What if teachers and teaching could be mutually exclusive? What if a teacher did not need a classroom? Could a teacher be more a way of being? This last idea caught you right between the ribs.
You thought about teachers from your high school, teachers you worked with in Philadelphia, ad the teachers in training at your first graduate school. They all worked as teachers and yet none of them seemed to live as one; to move through the world approaching each interaction as an opportunity to learn, grow and change. To teach without first living as a teacher lacked luster you craved, so you walked the other way. You made a commitment my dear, to be your own teacher and to view the world as your own classroom. In that way you could live life as a teacher and every experience could hold that "rapture of being alive." Years later, with that strength in foundation you returned to the school system. You thought, "Maybe now that I know I am a teacher and the world is my classroom, I could work inside a classroom again." You decided to reconcile because the love was still there. And at the end of the day, that is all that really matters isn't it?
Upon further prying of how and why you recommitted yourself to education three categories emerged: the spiritual, focusing on my macro understanding of the external world; the personal, my micro or internal motivation; and he political, which exists in the space where the other two collide. The rest of this letter to you, my dear, is an examination and exploration of each of these categories, elaborating on each grouping, its genesis, and its potential. These values should be pervasively applicable--you should be able to treat your students with the same love, respect, reverence and rigor that you would address yourself, your family, your colleagues and your friends. I intend for these values and formatting to evolve with you. More importantly, I hope they act as a grounding and reminding force for those times when you will need both. According to Joseph Campbell, "If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living." I do not expect that because you found your 'bliss' you will never lost it, so you can also think of this letter as a 'just in case.'
The Spiritual: Understand the way that we move through the world, how we feel about ourselves, understand ourselves, make decisions, determine our values, affect ourselves and others, in an effort to nurture joyful, grounded, inspired, ethical and rational beings.
Honor Us: We are all living through the same awakening. Some of us are more awake than others; some of us were more awake than we are now. The process moves fluidly and constantly. Remember to recognize this limitless possibility within each person. We may be all things to ourselves and others in this life: beautiful and heinous, powerful and destructive, joyful and morose. To know that we have agency provides us with the power of choice. Remember to respect one's choice as an act of creation. We can drastically change what we choose to create from moment to moment.
Study Us: For a person to discover that she is made of endless possibility she must learn how to see herself, to hear herself, to know herself. Help us to know ourselves, how we learn and how we think. Give us the space to study ourselves and to learn from our mistakes. Allow us to feel safe enough to try new methods and explore both our internal and external worlds.
Enable Us: Each person walks their own way. Therefore each person arrives at an education through innumerable ways. Help us to determine our own educations. Ask us to develop our own inquiries and follow the questions that burn for us.
"Do No Harm" to Us: We are naturally wired to learn, do not turn us off from learning. Do not separate our questions, our thoughts, our interests, our lessons from us.
Expose Us to Riches: Diversify what diversity means--go beyond race, culture, gender, perspectives, opinions, methods, etc. We live in an enormous world and throughout time people have found countless ways to solve the same problems. Understand and respect the validity of these differences. Help others to recognize that grandeur.
The Personal: Tend to yourself as if you were your favorite student. Remember how small a piece of knowledge you will ever know. Everyone is your teacher, the world is your classroom; dream, work, be.
Learn from others: All learners must be both teachers and students. Everyone has a perspective to offer and experiences to teach from--while you were off developing your own thoughts, others were off developing theirs.
Ask Big Questions: The ones that probably don't have answers, or at least not clean ones. The right question frames the entire exploration, provoking discovery of all kinds. Discovery holds more weight than answers. Learn to question the fundamentally accepted truths. Learn to question the fundamentally accepted truths, break down barriers and progress to new understandings.
Make Connections: Once we understand the effect we have on people, places, ourselves, we can make informed choices based on how we want to affect people, places and ourselves.
Avoid Manipulation: Do not ask them to learn for you, but rather for themselves. Everyone must find their own entry points, the ones which inspire them, the ones that make them feel alive. Beware of your intentions and the role you play so you do not allow someone to believe you will love them less or hate them more based on the choices they make for themselves.
The Political: Develop activism within education, both on the microcosmic level of how the system functions in your classroom, or school, and on the macro-cosmic level of the school system. How are issues such as power, authority, equity, autonomy and agency being dealt with and in some cases distributed. Work towards equity and justice both in the classroom and outside of it.
Shout for Those Who Can Only Whisper: Provide them a voice when and where they do not have one. If possible, help them to speak for themselves. If not, than consult with those you are speaking for. Be careful you are relaying their wishes and thoughts, not just the voice you think serves them best.
Facilitate: Help to negotiate the relationships between students, their parents, the community, and whoever else may be involved. Foster respectful and constructive dialogues.
Share Power: Actively examine the role of power and authority. Who has it? Who does not? How are these forces being used? How can they be better used? Commit yourself to sharing power and authority. Everyone should be allowed to determine their own lives (as long as they are not hurting others).
Examine Your 'isms: Seek new ways to organize against bias. Reflect on your own behavior and do not scare from confronting others as regards theirs. These experiences are inevitably uncomfortable and easy enough to avoid because you are white, straight, upper middle class, educated, and physically-abled. Remember the ways in which you are privileged and the ways in which you are not. Consciously and continuously examine and develop your perspective on issues of bias.
Develop Citizenship: Recognize your responsibilities to teach each other, own your part in creating problems and solving them.
Collaborate: Work with others to seek varying perspectives and teamness. Share your ideas and ask others for theirs. Model a collective mentality; without it a collective can never form.
You carry the weight of a precarious soul: a spirit unwilling to accept anything but its desire, spoiled with the experiences of meaning, love, and joy. This weight may seem heavy, latent with responsibilities and commitments to yourself and others. But you must carry it as your compass, honor it and it will be your best ally, it will keep you from going astray.
Good luck my dear and have faith that if you do your part the world will grow healthier than if you don't do your part. So, at least there's that. But of course you know there is so much more. You can feel it on your shoulders and in that place between your ribs.
Stay strong, stay true, stay open, and keep loving--this is a love letter after all.
Maya
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