Education/al Musings
previously published • 24 June 2025
Thinking as a teacher
Originally published April 27, 2025
I’ve spent the last few days at an education research conference out of town. So I suppose it’s not shocking that I’m thinking about education, specifically teaching.
As I explored in my dissertation—no I don’t expect you to read it—I’ve come to understand myself as a teacher. But not in a traditional way, since I don’t have a certification from a state or have spent years in front of a classroom of kids. But teaching (and learning) is really in my blood, I think. From a very young age, I was playing school with seriously old “textbooks” (like early 1900’s old) and reading everything I could get my hands on, and I was an older sister/secondary parent and probably an annoying know-it-all. I have always thought deeply about, well, everything; although I likely learned early on that most people don’t like to be “told things” when in fact I just like sharing information (core memory unlocked?).
Again, these are things that don’t necessarily fall under the “normal” umbrella of being a teacher. Add to that list homeschooling my kids, educating my “bonus” kids, and always having some kind of teaching or training aspect of every job I’ve ever had. I have been lucky enough to find some jobs where teaching has been an explicit part of my job, such as teaching in college and being an entrepreneurship advisor/program creator.
Even now, as an editor, which doesn’t necessarily seem like a teaching role, I’ve been able to work with some clients in more of a coaching role, where the relationship and the work is deeper than me just “fixing” their words. This has been very fulfilling, actually. Coming together around their intellectual work—helping them elaborate, uncover, dig deeper, and/or gather clarity—is such satisfying work. I learn about new ideas, new people, new angles… That might seem weird to hear, but for me a big part of teaching is also learning.
There are some academic expressions of this that I have been and will continue to pull together for that audience (and I learned about some more outlets for that this week!), but in plain language, teaching, to me, is a lot about coming together and being heard/seen. Not erasing difference, not focusing on how we come from separate lives and selves (which includes our individual histories, cultures, experiences, etc) but also not just focusing on where we are alike—but honoring both of those and coming together openly to listen and learn and teach. To say, here is a thing I’ve been thinking about or that I see; let me show you.
Right now I know that probably sounds really fucking kumbayah, especially with everything happening in the world. But I also know that we need to find a way to strengthen, retain, or find connection with other humans if we’re going to make it through these times that feel like “end times.” As someone pointed out in a conference session (I’m pretty sure it was Michael Apple, which won’t mean a lot to many of you, but to the other dorky academics out there it might), sometimes we need to make partnerships with odd bedfellows and come together with people we might not normally—that there are issues on which we fundamentally disagree, but there may be one or two issues on which we agree and it is THERE, in that particular space, that we can work together on a thing, and perhaps also through that work expose our humanity to one another. To start to see that those “other” people are really also just people, doing what they think is right for themselves and their families. That doesn’t mean that we have to go along with them on anything (else), but without the opportunity to come together around SOME THING, we will definitely never be able to look into their eyes as humans.
It’s like (I know there’s a saying, an adage, but I will likely screw it up), something good may not come of the interaction, but for sure without the interaction nothing good will be able to come.
All of that to say that education—teaching and learning—it can come from unlikely places and people. True education isn’t just about school/ing. It actually emerges from human interactions—face to face, via Zoom or the phone, through a book or a video, a blog post or a TikTok—interactions where we can, for a moment, pull aside our everyday masks or crack the window into our real selves and let in some connection. This doesn’t deny our history; it doesn’t make everything all right that is not; it doesn’t magically make everything good and whole and fine; but without these moments we cut ourselves off from the possibility that anything can be better.
Maybe for me, there has always been a crack in my window, and that is why I am a teacher. Even when history and culture and experience has “taught” me to keep the window closed to protect myself, I’ve somehow managed to keep it cracked (or perhaps it’s like windshield crack, that maybe is getting bigger!) and that’s “why” or what defines me as a teacher….
Whatever it is that has enabled me to stay in touch with this part of me, I’m thankful for it.