Teaching Transforms The Teacher

The classroom is a very special place. Great things can take place in the classroom. Minds are opened, envelopes are pushed, and boundaries are expanded.

With any luck, a well-planned teaching session will resonate with a student. Each class, lecture, or seminar has the potential to be the catalyst for change, for growth, for educational advancement. Any given session could even go so far as to evoke personal transformation in the student. A daunting task perhaps?

But what is oftentimes forgotten is that teaching provides an amazing opportunity to transform the teacher as well as the student. So it was as I prepared a guest lecture on health and wellness for the first year DPT students at Texas State University.

There are admittedly many approaches to the world of adult education. Perhaps one of the most common - the one that I am sure we have all experienced far too often - is the teacher that simply goes through the motions, standing at the front of a classroom while reading from the mandatory text while the students struggle to maintain consciousness. The educational experience, for these teachers, is more about being the "sage on the stage" than creating an educational experience. They usually do a good job of enforcing the hierarchy of the classroom - they are the teacher, you are the student, and don't you forget it.

Unless the goal of education is to stroke the ego of the instructor, then this approach tends to not create a very constructive environment for learning.

However, teaching can also be approached as an experience that transforms the student and the teacher.

Creating a lecture plan is an adventure. Along the way, you try to plot a strategy to create an environment for learning. But if you are fortunate, there may be times when epiphanies occur during the process. It can appear as a fleeting moment when knowledge, context, and years of practice cross paths with attempting to see the world through the eyes of the learner. Suddenly there are new relationships amongst the parts and a clarity of redundancies and critical elements. The lecture - and the teacher - are both forever altered by this epiphany. You, the teacher, will never be able to see the material in the same light again.

Such was the case as I mulled over the game plan for this particular lecture on health and wellness. At first, it was a struggle to make some rather mundane information a little more interesting. But then there was that epiphany, an exciting new development that continued to evolve throughout the duration of the lecture itself with the input from the students.

It wasn't just the preparation and presentation of a lecture. It wasn't just "teaching a class". It was synergy, mentorship, and collaboration all wrapped into one, an evolving discussion amongst future colleagues. It was, for lack of a better phrase, pretty cool stuff.

I have always enjoyed the challenge of finding the "key" to unlock a topic for the students in any of my classes. It is a unique challenge much like the problem-solving that a clinician experiences with each and every patient - but with a few more eyes peering your way.

But over the years I have come to learn that teaching is an opportunity for my own learning, transformation, and perceptual shift. Teaching transforms this teacher - each and every time I set sail on an educational adventure. With a little good fortune, there might just be an epiphany waiting for us along the way. Pretty cool stuff, indeed.

Photo credits: jerryw387

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