School parent Jim Stuart (Mikayla and Savanah) suggested that, for a sabbatical, I go out and find some new teachers, which sounded like a great idea. So, I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past six months.
I took an open approach: I had no agenda and no idea who those teachers would be. Strangely, in every single case, I did not know I had found a new teacher until they had been teaching me for a while and our correspondence was advancing. So I didn’t seek out new teachers so much as they dawned on me. Have you ever had that experience? Perhaps teacher is a role that, in the truest sense, cannot be assigned. It is a relationship—a noble one, I believe—that is developed once you are open to it.
I’ve loved rediscovering what it means to be a real teacher. My teachers over these months have been an eclectic group, to be sure. Here are some of them:
Deborah Meier (author, widely acknowledged as the founder of the small schools movement, former principal)
Roger White Eyes (Native American teacher)
Diane Ravitch (NYU research professor of education, best selling author, former US Asst. Secretary of Education)
Doug Katz (Marketing and Leadership expert, author, Grauer School consultant)
Rick Hanson (author of Buddha’s Brain, neuroscientist)
Sean Hauze (Grauer School teacher who is patiently showing me how I will need to communicate in the future)
I have had deepening, extended, back and forth correspondence with all of these fascinating teachers, and quite a few others. All of them have directly helped me advance my work and thinking about great education and what it means to be a teacher. I am amazed that these gifted people were right there in my path, and I am forever grateful to them. Who in life can we ever be more grateful for than a great teacher?
There were also some other, negative teachers—people I learned a lot from by virtue of my non-admiration or disagreement with their teachings–but I won’t name names. There are also a great many people who could have been truly great teachers for me had I taken more time to pursue this.
Michelle Rhee is another good teacher, and I had beneficial correspondence with her team. (They invited me onto their task force.) They also posted a website contest to find the best definition of teaching. Here was my entry: “Teaching is the study of the student.”
Being a student again was great—it was like flying. And it made me see that my real teachers were not only those whose work and minds I admired but those whose interest in my mind and work was most genuine. It’s mutual: teachers and students trade places all the time. I am now convinced that a real teacher must be in equal part a student. Just learning that one concept would be a great takeaway for a sabbatical, but I got far more out of it. Ask me! In fact, at the bottom of this column, you can even blog with me. Please do!
Over the past six months, the school parents, teachers, board and administration have supported this fertile time of regeneration for me with considerable sacrifice. Also, over the past six months I have come to see more clearly than ever how extraordinary our faculty is: they have a level of caring and a level of listening to students I’ve never seen elsewhere—they are all teachers for me. I don’t even know how to start showing how deeply grateful I am for all of the above, but I am committed to trying.
I wish you all a beautiful second semester,
Dr. Stuart Grauer
