Saturday, April 2, 2011
It's True—Teaching Is Learning
Over the past four semesters, I've had the opportunity to teach a Spanish class at a local community college with a very diverse population. My favorite part of the job is watching students think. I can feel their individual and collective processes of offering thoughtful comments, posing intelligent questions, and sharing significant insights. I enjoy their kindness, sense of cooperation, and consideration of each other. They are trusting and their openness has great value. Their humanity is more of a reminder than a lesson that the answer to Rodney King's famous questions is, "Yes. We can all get along."
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4 comments:
This one made me think... :-)
Last weekend I had the privilege of walking a world-class cross country eventing course with the course designer. If you're not familiar with eventing, it is an equestrian sport which is a sort of triathlon. It is made up of dressage, show jumping and cross country, and those three events couldn't be more different in their demands on both horses and riders.
Cross country is undoubtedly the most challenging of the three. It is a real test of skill and also of trust - although the riders are allowed to familiarize themselves with the course in advance of their test, the horses are not. So they must trust the rider with their lives (quite literally).
What struck me most about the course designer's comments was the language he used to describe the fences. He kept saying, "This jump asks the question...". I had never thought of the partnership between horses and their riders as being a rhetorical one, but it is. And it is definitely analogous to the relationship between a student and his teacher.
In this analogy, the teacher is the rider. She has been there before, so the student must trust her to steer him right. But at the same time, the teacher is completely reliant on the student's native abilities and intuition, as well as his willingness to learn. It is a true partnership - neither person can function without the other - and it is also a true meeting of the minds. So I very much agree that teaching is learning, and I wouldn't hesitate to apply the same theory to inter-species relationships...
Corydora, your thoughtful insight raises the question about the consciousness of animals and plants for that matter. Might they have some sense of how they contribute to the lives or humans, or have they evolved way beyond the "I" and "You"?
There's always so much for each of us to discover! What a wonderful notion of a "jump asking a question." What a wonderful metaphor for confidence on the one hand, and the extent of one's abilities, on the other. It's amazing how language facilitates communication.
The term, "Cross Country," is very evocative. It's the name of my very first novel, which deals with a love triangle that contains an interracial element. I reduced it from a 600-page novel to the third short story in my collection, Music for the Dream. Because I feel compelled to make connections in general, the trust aspect of this particular equestrian event is reminiscent of a common reluctance to cross color lines.
Just wanted to add a couple of comments: first, re animals and their consciousness. Most people will acknowledge that mammals (e.g. cats, dogs, chimps, dolphins, etc.) can think and feel, but whenever I tell people that my tropical fish are just as full of emotion and consciousness, they don't believe me. Yet why shouldn't fish be as aware as we are? They have to solve problems, get along with others and avoid dangers in their complex environments, just as we do. As for plants, I recently read a book from the 1970s called The Secret Life of Plants which is a must-read if you're interested in how plants think!
And 2) re connections. "Only connect" has always been one of my favourite lines from a novel. I look forward to reading your story based on "Cross Country". I think I've mentioned before that in the UK, crossing colour lines is not nearly as difficult as crossing class lines. The class structure is still firmly entrenched here, but as a "foreigner" I am able to cross class boundaries in a way that natives can't.
Having trained as an anthropologist (many years ago!) I often find myself slipping into the role of "participant observer" when I'm at a social event. The cues that people use to determine class can be very subtle - it's not just how someone dresses and speaks (those can both be learned) but which words they use. The wrong ones (e.g., saying dinner instead of supper or toilet instead of loo) will immediately give someone away as an impostor. Hmmm, now that I think of it, some of the dinner parties I've been to recently would make very good short stories...!
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