TEACHING.

I was born a teacher. I have always taught. Ever since I could gather my stuffed animals, then my siblings, in front of a blackboard, I was excited about sharing the amazing things I had learned and excited to motivate others to make discoveries. Even as a theater director, a mother, a journalist, and a student myself, I engaged in the dialectic as a means of mining for great insight and understanding. Yes, it's the job of a teacher to convey knowledge and skill to her students, but more importantly, a teacher must help students understand "how" to learn.

 

As a result of my work with diverse populations, and my own experience as a student of philosophy and history, I've come to realize that knowledge and information are greatly influenced by the cultural forces of time and place. In combining the Socratic method of inquiry with the idea that truth exists, I follow a tenant prescribed by Alexander Pope in a poem he wrote in 1711:A little learning is a dang’rous thing / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. (The Pierian spring was a source of knowledge, art and science for the muses in Greek mythology).

 

I am fully on board with Pope’s claim that while a small taste from the spring of knowledge causes us to be “intoxicated” with our own learning, drinking deep “sobers” us so that we realize how much more there is to know. This brings it back 'round to Socrates who said, I know that I know nothing. It is also the foundation for the Buddha Sakymuni, who after a lifetime of teaching held that he taught his disciples nothing and that to know is to discover one’s self.