The Beauty of the Youngest

I am reposting this piece in order to honor and mark Kira DelMar's first week teaching a class of her very own. Congratulations, Kira!

What could warm the cockles of a teacher's heart more than the news that a former student has become a teacher herself? I can't think of anything more wonderful, and I am about to bust a gut with pride. Three of my former students have become teachers. One in Japan, one in Switzerland, and one - the subject of this post - in California. 

To celebrate, today's missive comes to you from Kira DelMar, teacher (!), artist, and all-around talented young woman. I hope she does not mind that I lifted my favorite of her paintings (above, "Psyche") from her beautiful website. 

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Jess, 

Some thoughts:

I think the thing that I valued most about you as a teacher was exactly what you said in your response to the 'blah blah blah lifelong learners' article; the moments when you would reveal that you weren't in fact omnipotent, and that you, too, were still learning. It blew my mind the first time you answered a question with 'I don't know' - I'm not sure I'd ever heard those words from a teacher before. And then when you came back the next day and told us the answer, and beyond that, told us how you had found out the answer, I think that might have been the moment when I figured out I wanted to be a teacher. (That might also just be a narrative that I'm imposing on my memories in retrospect, but I know that it was a moment that stuck with me, at the least.) 

Being a teacher had always seemed boring before - what's the point of already knowing everything? But if you could be a teacher and still get to learn new things, and figure stuff out, and respond to questions with more questions instead of just pulling the answers right out of your filled-to-the-top brain, well...that job might not be so bad after all.

I do agree with the author of the original article that the main thing getting in the way of all teachers being this way is ego; the need to appear to have mastery of a subject before teaching it. I recently had a great discussion with our science specialist, Cris, about how she teaches computer programming to her middle school tech students. She basically assigns them each to a computer, provides them with an option of a basic curriculum, as well as websites with tutorials about programming in different language. The kids have time to explore and build whatever kind of project they are interested in, and when they say, "I don't know how to..." she replies, "I don't know either, but let's find out." She had never done computer programming herself before teaching the class, and every semester the kids discover new languages that she's not yet imagined. Cris told one of our lead teachers this, and the teacher asked "Aren't you scared that the kids will figure out you don't know what you're doing?" to which Cris responded, "No, because I tell them right up front that I don't know what I'm doing." And every semester, her kids create amazing projects that show their own interests and strengths and mastery of a subject that both surpasses and extends their teacher's knowledge. 

I'm not sure whether I'm effectively modeling this in my own teaching yet, but again, I'm still learning, and luckily, I had excellent examples to learn from. 

Xoxo,

Kira

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I don't know about you, but I'd let Kira teach my children, any day of the week.