The more I teach, the less I know..

Year 1998. Eleven years ago. I hit my first chalk dusty dark classroom.

I graduated from college and had my first job as a Psychology instructor to freshmen BS Nursing and AB students. I taught with all the idealism and pains of youth. I taught to heal myself by healing others. I thought of healing my students from the horrors of an indifferent educational system, indifferent to the sensitivities and insecurities of youth, indifferent to the creativity and energy of these young bodies, indifferent to their struggles to be loved and accepted, indifferent to all that they were capable of. I found myself burning and burning and eventually landing in a hospital yet still finding myself yearning to be back in that old dark classroom filled with young minds, then like me, waiting to be inspired or whose inspirations to be acknowledged.

That spark slowly flickered through the years... as I moved on to more curriculum and content-based institutions. I was slowly overwhelmed with the guidelines to be administered and breadth of content to be covered - and for the first time- to be told how to teach. My spirit as well as my pains flickered silently to death. I was wishing to be given the freedom to teach Psychology the way I knew best - teach from the heart and to the heart. I was wishing to find an institution that encourages and not only allows me freedom to teach creatively, to value it and just not to mind it, to honor it and not just to appreciate it. Nine long years after, I found myself in that place. Acknowledged and supported for my creative ways of reaching out the content. I found kindred souls in education and its progressive philosophy. It feels like finding a place under the sun, not feeling too lonely in my crusades. I finally found people who shared my passion for new ways of teaching and learning new ways of learning. Apparently though, all these are aged old wisdom. " I do, and I understand".

I never thought of asking these question to myself one day, " What truly makes a great teacher?". One who is but true to herself? One who can inspire? One who ceases not to learn? One who has mastered her craft? One who can hear her students' hearts? One who can stimulate their already brilliant minds? One who is prepared and organized? One who is spontaneous? One who is spiritual? One who is an intellectual? One who only facilitates? One who can command? Who can entertain or one who can teach how to focus and persevere? One who is a friend or the one who serves? One who can entertain or one who can discipline?

I had all my answers tightly secured in my knowing and feelings the first day I taught 11 years ago. At present, I have more questions than one.