Conversations with Great Teachers

Introduction

One of my most memorable moments in preparing this book occurred during my interview with Arthur Lane, a retired fencing teacher in his nineties . In response to one of my questions, he instructed me to pick up a fencing foil. He cradled my hands in his and adjusted my grip. Then he had me move the foil this way and that, explaining why this grip was the best, and I understood in both my hand and my mind that it was. The understanding was embodied, literally. When he removed his hands, I could still feel their touch. The lesson lingered as a physical sensation. That moment is emblematic of what I have come to think of as the education triad: the teacher, the student, and that which passes between them. But what passes between them? And how? What happened in my hand when the old fencing teacher held it and explained the grip? How does that metamorphosis we call learning happen? What do great teachers say about their teaching? These were the questions that led me to my project of interviewing fifty-one great teachers about their teaching. I am a long-time admirer of the late Studs Terkel’s work: his books of interviews with people about their jobs, their memories of the Great Depression, their experiences in World War II. My wish that he had done a book of interviews with teachers morphed into an idea, then an intent, and finally a commitment—I would do one myself. Classroom teachers were a logical start, but I soon realized that teaching takes place in many corners of society. So I sought great teachers everywhere, and everywhere I found them—an inspirational group of men and women who generously granted me conversations about their teaching. Among them were teachers of first grade and college physics, teachers of firefighting, fiction writing, exotic dancing, brain surgery, and circus arts. I did the first interview in June of 2007 and my last in January of 2009. Though these teachers comprised a diverse group, I began to see qualities that their teaching had in common. Not that they had a single way to teach—far from it. But among this diversity of people, disciplines, and styles of teaching, I found universals. More than once I heard a phrase only slightly different from something said in an earlier interview, though one teacher instructed first graders in reading and the other taught adults how to wrestle alligators. Introduction xii | Introduction One commonality is that they all regard teaching as not just as a job but as a calling, a combination of serious purpose and sacred commitment to that purpose. Lynette Wayne, a first-grade teacher, says simply, “Teaching chose me.” These are people with a mission, and that metamorphosis we call learning is their cause. There’s the old joke about the person who, when asked if he likes his job, replies , “If I liked it, it wouldn’t be a job.” The teachers with whom I talked love their work, using words like “passion” and “joy.” Teaching is more than what they do; it is who they are, and it defines their place in the world. Several of the teachers now retired kept slipping into present tense when they talked about teaching—not because they wish they were still teaching, but because in their teaching they had been so deeply themselves. John Faggi, a prep-school English teacher, quotes his former headmaster as identifying in great teachers “an authentic presence in the classroom.” I often thought about that phrase in doing these interviews, because the teachers with whom I spoke seem in their teaching to be so deeply in their element. They have not always felt so from the beginning of their careers, but when they remember their first years of teaching, they realize that what they acquired over time was that sense of belonging in the classroom. This authentic presence is important because the teaching triad is fundamentally a human relationship—in all of its multi-layered depth, complexity, richness, and challenge. Every act of learning involves a change in the learner. Acquiring a fact is a small change; learning to act, to perform surgery, or to be a soldier or a writer is a larger transformation. The student who once did not understand poetry but now loves it is a new person. To allow oneself to be taught—to be changed— requires trust. The teacher must be deeply authentic in the classroom because...