The Zen of Higher Education

A koan: the hardest part of being a teacher is being a student.

What does this mean? It means, first, fully understanding that learning is the essence of being an educator. Once you have accepted that, you must embrace what it means to be a student. The frustration of trying to grasp something you do not fully comprehend. The pains of failure and the pleasures of wresting small advances from the grind of learning. The humiliations of confronting your own limitations and the strength you gain from overcoming them. Even, yes, even, the dullness of the repetition necessary to secure understanding.

To be a good teacher you must be prepared to put yourself at intellectual hazard. Partly because how else can you reach the edge of your own subject? Partly because you are required to place your students in the same condition and must know what it feels like. To be able to be a student allows you to teach more effectively because you can understand how to organise and pace your material in a manner suitable for learners. The simple lesson, that everybody learns in different ways is an immediate shared experience.

Being comfortable being a student means you can 'flip' your classroom, not simply handing back the responsibility for learning but actually being prepared to learn from your students, as peers. It entails setting aside the need to control the setting and the learning of others.

Though being, or perhaps becoming, a student is psychically hard, it is practically easy. Take a step aside, out of your comfort zone. Simply this: start to teach something you do not know at the outset. Even committing to learning something outside your professional ambit makes a big difference. Lastly, make learning part of the fabric of your day. A much admired former colleague used to set himself the goal of learning something new each day, pulling education and personal growth from the stuff of work. He was able to always be a student and thus, a teacher.

This all comes full circle, to the point where students are teachers supporting each other's learning and engaged with the collective gaining of knowledge and understanding, just as teachers are students.