Learning to teach is like building a house

Learning to teach is like building a house. Each new technique becomes a section, a room, or a floor.

A strong foundation ensures that a small house will blossom outward in all directions, transforming a quaint cottage into a townhouse, a mansion, and then someday a palace.

As we grow, we invite other teachers into our halls. We ask them to help us evolve our craft more perfectly. Hearts naked we implore, does this table go better here or there? Should this hallway annex the living area or the backyard?

It is tempting to think that because we are teachers we are building to house our students. But it is impossible to house the infinite.

We build for our students, not so that we may guide them through our decorated interiors and wade through the waterways of our dreams; we build so that our students may guide us beyond the doorsteps of their interiors, towards the fountains of their dreams.

We build to earn trust. For it is in the heart of the student that the teacher's learning truly begins.

If we remain prudent and if we are lucky, the student will invite us from their doorstep into their home. We will find that some rooms will be orderly and others will be chaotic.

If we can embrace the chaos with compassion remaining a worthy companion, then perhaps the student will trust us enough to lead us deeper into the caverns of themselves, down the creaking stairway into the dark abyss of their fears.

It is there in those caves that we will find the wellspring of life: a small pool glowing a warm, greenish light. We crouch at the edge of the pool and look in together.

To teach is to guide one back to one's self.

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