Being a Teacher
Gleanings from Educating Christians, The Intersection of Meaning, Learning, and Vocation by Seymour, Crain, and Crockett, 1993.
Teachers are Co-Learners
The teacher is an interpreter among interpreters because students are also interpreting God’s word for their lives.
Teachers have power but teacher can create a context for mutual learning. For instance, to answer truthfully, “I really don’t know. I’m exploring it along with you.”
Just like when I preach from the same text a second time offers new meaning, the teacher also discovers new meaning while sharing learning with students.
To be a co-learner, a teacher must listen. Listening is the starting point for creating hospitable space that empowers students’ transformation. A careful listener gives courage and encourages questioning. Listening is not passive. The listener must focus and actively follow the train of thought and enters fully into the discussion, seeking to hear the truth of it.
Even when we try to listen as carefully as possible to another person’s story, it’s always inadequate. Communication, at best, is partial. We say that we understand but in reality, we understand partially. The teacher hears only a fragment of what a learner offers. Recognizing our limits, both teacher and students approach learning with humility.
The teacher can only be a co-learner. To claim a greater role in the learning or making meaning in another is to presume too much.
The most compelling reason for the teacher to be a co-learner is that individuals reach their fullest sense of humanity in relationship. Mutuality encourages all participants to learn from one another and honor the learning that each other discovers.
Why Do We Teach
Four Reasons
1. We teach to learn and to share our learning.
Every time I prepare for Bible study, I learn something new. I learn from the perspectives of biblical scholars who place the passage in its proper context. How did the first hearers understand this passage? I compare how this passage is related to other similar incidents in the Bible. And because of the Bible is the living word, God allows us to see how the passage applies to our daily life today. As co-learners, teacher and students, together, we discover that the passage has been speaking to all of us in different ways all along the way.
2. We teach because human being hunger for connectedness.
Whenever a group comes together to learn, we notice how much we enjoy being together. Even though we cannot completely know what we experience, we seek to be heard, even if only fragmentarily by others. Hearing from each other establishes connection. This connection is energizing that we want to have more. In our Bible study, we study for 45 minutes and spend another 60 minutes being connected.
3. We teach because we have experienced God’s good news.
When we encounter the “Holy,” we feel compelled to “go tell it on the mountain.” But transformation is painful because it means that the old meanings die in order to find new life in the resurrection. When we need healing, we share the good news with co-learners. Ministers sometimes joke with each other by saying, “What’s the good word today?” This is because we always have some good news to share.
4. We teach to search for truth, wholeness and justice.
This passion gives us the impulse to a pilgrimage in which both teacher and students participate. As teachers and students, we believe that God’s plan and truth is unfolding in the world and we are passionate to help the world know about this. God’s truth is for real and we are obedient to sharing that truth with others and to hear God’s truth experienced by others as well.
We teach because truth matters so much, because there is good news to be shared, because we hunger for wholeness, because learning energizes, and because we need communities to share meaning.
9/11/2004