The following is an article I wrote on the connection between teaching and life-long learning. Although it was written specifically for teaching in an academic setting, I think that it applies to anyone teaching at any level or in any context (pastors included). This article was rejected by some of the finest journals in the teaching field. That's why you are reading it here ;)
How did I get myself into this situation again? It has been almost four years since I passed my doctoral exams and successfully defended my dissertation. At that time I vowed that I would never again put myself into this situation. Several things came to mind in the few moments after I was informed that I had passed my oral defense. Mostly I remember the overwhelming sense of relief that culminated my twelve years of graduate studies. But I also remember one thought in particular. As I drove home that day I vowed: “That was the last exam I will ever take.”
Yet here I am, sweating out another exam. I mean literally sweating. The perspiration pours down my face. I feel so much tension, in fact, that I want to scream. So I do scream. As I finish the exam I yell “Ki- ya” and punch my fist in the air.
I am testing for my yellow belt in Tae-Kwon-Do. Over the last month, I have been taking classes two nights a week and now I am in the middle of a gymnasium with around one hundred other people. They are watching me perform a series of exercises designed to demonstrate a mastery of very basic martial arts skills.
My reason for pursuing this new course of study is a bit more difficult to explain. I am in my sixth year in a tenure track position in philosophy and religious studies. My days are filled with course preparations, writing articles and an ongoing deluge of committee meetings. Three nights a week whiplash occurs as I transition from the mental to the physical arena.
The physical and psychical benefits of martial arts are well documented. They require strenuous effort. When I first signed up for these classes my main goal was to retrain my doughy body which has been finely sculpted by the hours spent standing and lecturing and carried the soft pale hue that only comes from fluorescent lighting found in aging libraries. A second reason that I undertook this regimen was to assist me in learning self-defense. There have been a few occasions during departmental meetings and conference presentations when such knowledge would have been comforting.
But I have been surprised at how much this supposedly personal endeavor has affected my professional approach to pedagogy. I have discovered that the act of learning a new skill has significant implications for how I teach my students. Far from being a mere diversion, this new exercise has begun to reshape my approach to students in the classroom.
First, I am convinced that the act of continuous learning is inherently beneficial. Although we academics spend our professional time engaged in a contemplative life, it is rare that we venture well beyond our own provincial fields. I suspect that the act of acquiring new skills sharpens our wits and allows our minds to remain active and ever-seeking. I have seen similarities drawn between my own areas of research (philosophy and religious studies) and the martial arts. These similarities help me to draw these connections for the class.
Second, my Tae-Kwon-Do classes have helped to keep before me the students’ perspective. A dozen years of graduate school has inoculated me to the initial shock and fear that can accompany the student’s initial exposure to a new area of study. But as I become a student again, I recognize that I do not know a great deal. As I see my instructors carefully going over the same forms, kicks and punches with me, it reminds me of the need to patiently explain and repeat materials in classes of my own. To learn from the ground up reinforces my own patience. My undergraduate years began several decades ago. I need reminders about how difficult the acquisition of knowledge can be.
Third, I hope that my own pursuit of knowledge can model a life-long desire for learning to my own students. They need to understand that their professors are also are engaged in learning. After a rather severe ankle sprain (incurred while foolishly sparring with a man half my age), I was forced to go public with my new-found pursuit. The treatment for my ankle required that I keep it inclined. This led to a very unprofessoral posture as I lectured to my class from a chair, left leg resting upon the desk, as if I were a photograph of one of those Russian leg dances, captured in mid-stride. A student asked “How did you hurt your leg, Dr. Taran?” I had a polished reply ready: “I twisted my ankle when I got into a fight over the weekend.” Apparently this story was so far outside my classroom persona that she didn’t even pause before her next question. “No really, Dr. Taran, how’d you do it?”
Such conversations, it is my hope, make me three dimensional to my students. They reveal me as not a flat, but rather a
round character. (Of course, the alternative is that the students will instead see this as another manifestation of that vain attempt to recapture lost youth, most commonly seen around our campus faculty in either the
comb-over hairstyle or the powerful sports car). Modeling a desire for learning is an effective way of conveying that same desire to students.
Lastly, learning a new skill keeps me well grounded. If Socrates is correct that an awareness of our own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, then admitting that I know nothing about a field is an important first step. Arrogance and its stepbrother pomposity are the stock and trade of our profession. Starting a field anew might prove to be a necessary antidote. It is humbling to go to my first class and realize that I really don’t know the material—and that the seven year old to my right does! After signing up for the class, I learned to my horror that one of the instructors was a former student of mine. Now the tables are turned. The evaluated has become the evaluator and the hunter now is the hunted. Right before my test, he approaches me, shakes my hand and says, “Just remember what you’ve been taught and relax, you’ll do well on the test.” I can imagine myself uttering those words to my own students.
As the testing began, the students lined up according to the ranks of their belts. First in line are the black belts, next comes red, then brown, purple, blue, green, yellow and (lastly) white. I am a white belt, which means that I have to wait as teenagers and eight year olds line up in front of me. When the call is made for white belts to line up I am running alongside five and six year olds (including my own seven-year old daughter, ye gods!).
So why do I do it? I now see that taking up a new field improves my pedagogy. One night, after I make the same mistake for the third time, one of my instructors wryly asks “Aren’t you a professor or something?” But I am not. At least not here, here I am a student. And I am convinced that being a student makes me a better teacher.
