Teacher as Person: Reflection 1

"Who is the self that teaches?";

I find these kinds of questions quite bizarre sometimes. I'm not completely convinced that conceptions of self are at all stable in the way we usually presume them to be. Self seems context dependent which means it's in flux and therefore difficult to delimit. I wonder about the ways self correlates with identity. Self sometimes means something like the ego or that part of our identity that lusts, remembers, and languishes in psychological pain. Or it can mean something like soul—some separate and distinct but ethereal umbra independent of physical reality. Either way, neither definition appeals much to me. Maybe I'm suspicious because it smacks of a kind of essentialist dialectic. Problems over definition aside, I don't see how the self that teaches can be much different than the self that does anything else. The self that teaches is the same self that cooks, eats, stubs a toe, and feels an autumn breeze blow against the inside of a knee or elbow. The self that teaches is the same self that cries, struggles, and feels pain and confusion over a parent berating a child in Zellers. You may as well ask, who is the self that teaches the first year, after 10 years, after 35 years? Who is the self that teaches in Abbotsford, in Afghanistan? Who is the self that teaches when all is calm or who is the self that teaches after they've experienced the death of a child or truly falling in love? My answer is a kind of chaos theory—the self that teaches is so complex that I can never truly discover the actuality of it; or, my answer is simple--this collection of sensory experiences, intellectual extrapolations, and physical realities is the self that teaches and there can be no other.

"How can you bring that self to life during 401/401?";

So far, I see my 401/402 experience as feeding that essential part of myself that hungers for new experiences, that part of me that is both ardent and earnest. I see myself exploring not only what it means to be myself in a new environment but also seeing others explore themselves and their relationships to each other, the institution, and the profession. I understand that learning is an absolute drive for me and I am passionate about the potential of education to transform our intellectual, emotional, and physical landscapes. How can my self be anything other than alive in such an environment? Having said that, I understand that I have difficulties with institutions and authorities in general. In other words, I am constantly on guard for abuses of power; my dubiety acting to problematize my position within any institutional practice and complicating any ideas I have about my own authority. My iconoclastic tendencies could interfere with me opening myself to this experience as much as possible. To fully live the experience of 401/402, I need to set some of those fears aside and be less on guard.

"What do you bring to teaching?"

In addition to a diverse set of incomplete skills, a limited (but growing) knowledge, I bring an honest desire to teach with compassion and maturity. I understand what it is to hurt so badly, it's literally impossible to move; I understand what it is like to lose color and texture and complexity; and, I understand what is like to feel gathered up, mended and awakened by lyric joy. My desire is twofold, I want to be a part of an institution that has the potential to touch the lives on individuals in the midst of these kinds of formative experiences and to act as facilitator. Most importantly, I bring a commitment to be present, to live with my role as an educator through the lustrous and the opaque and even through the tedious gray of routine.