Teaching... Part 1

What is teaching? What does it mean “to teach?”

In some fashion, I have spent more than 20 years of my life trying to answer just these questions. That is, SO FAR, I have spent more than 20 years trying to figure this out.

The irony is that I have carried this burden since before I really, actually had any inkling of what was involved. When I was probably about 8 or 9, I began to feel that I wanted to be a teacher. Sure, I was a public school kid, and I had already experienced the classroom with several different teachers. However, this wasn’t just the feeling that “Gee, teachers sure are nice! That’s what I wanna be!”

Instead, as much as I can remember, it was natural. It just seemed like a shoe that fit. It was a sort of confident assumption, something that could not be reasoned but was surely true.

Years passed, many people in many ways reinforced this. Sometimes, I told them I wanted to be a teacher and they would say something like, “That fits you. I’ll bet you’ll be a good one.” Or at other times, people would listen to me or talk with me, and then suggest, “You know, you should be a teacher.”

My gifting and interests also reinforced this vocation. I have a quick mind, and I read well, with a strong memory. I am naturally confident in front of a group (or at least I can appear that way), and I can usually explain pretty complex things in a way most folks can chew on. It seems like the stuff of teaching, no?

So, yes, I am pretty sure that I am a teacher at heart. But this still doesn’t exactly answer our question… namely, what is teaching?