On Teaching: "Check Your Ego at the Door"

I suddenly realized this morning, as I was fretting about my shortcomings as a teacher, that a successful classroom has nothing to do with whether I personally feel successful as a teacher. After all, teaching is not, should not be, must not be, an ego-trip. Good teaching and learning is not about whether I can pat myself on the back after class and say, “Job well done”. Successful teaching is so much more than a single person in the front of the classroom desperately trying to make himself feel victorious and worthwhile. To use a timely analogy, teaching and learning is like the process of growth that happens in a forest in the springtime. No particular element in the woods is “in charge” of the process, because the process is much too vast for one element to organize and control. Rather, the seeds sprout and the breezes blow and the sunshine does its work and the rain comes when needed, all of them working together in a mysterious and seamless manner. This is similar to what occurs in my classroom each day. What happens to me – how I personally feel about my work as a teacher – is no more important than the countless happenings or feelings in my students. Indeed, while I’m feeling down about my work, a student in the back row may be having wondrous revelations about the book we are discussing. In the forest, if one flower is struggling to sprout, a thousand others are probably waving energetically in the warm wind.
There’s no doubt that teaching and learning is way, way bigger than one teacher’s isolated and insecure ego.