Friday, May 12, 2006

Friday Five Meme: Teaching

From holy memes and kosmic blog starters: It's week 2 for the Friday Five! We give five questions, and Zaadzsters answer them in their blogs. Join in! Tag your blog with the words “friday five” and let the pod know you posted. And if you have an idea for next week's Friday Five, send them to suzanne. Scatter the seeds!

Week 2: Teach!

1) Who's your favorite teacher, school or otherwise, and why?

My favorite teacher is Pema Chodron. I've never been fortunate enough to study with her in person, but her books have transformed my life in ways even Ken Wilber has never been able to accomplish. She is heart-centered, and she embodies the wisdom of the warrior in the Shambhala sense of the word.

2) Who was your least favorite, and why?

My least favorite teacher was Dr. Reynolds, the man who almost made me hate James Joyce. He was a teacher I had in grad school, an American who seemed to wish he were British. He was very closed-minded and assumed that any book had only one correct interpretation. If any of you have read Ulysses, you know how absurd that is.

3) What are the differences between bad and good teachers?

A Good teacher brings out the best in his/her students, encouraging them to find what is best within them. A bad teacher just spews information. A really bad teacher spews false information.

Come to think of it, this is why I am not a teacher. I don't yet know how to bring out the best in students, or to help them find it.

4) How can YOU become a great teacher? (And if you're already great, how can you become even better?)

To ever become a good teacher, I need to learn how to get out of my own way. When I used to lead poetry workshops, I was at my best when I allowed the people in the group to find the solutions to problems in their work without handing it to them. I don't know how to do that yet with the things I want to teach now.

5) If you could teach any subject in the world to any one group in the world, what would you teach to whom? And how?

I would teach integral relationship -- to anyone who wants to learn it and is in an evolving, conscious relationship already. This seems to be a topic I keep coming back to on my blog, even though I feel horribly inadequate to be telling others how to somethings I don't yet know how to do.


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