Bob notes in his book, “Trying to make sense of questions about teaching without looking at them in the context of the teacher’s whole life suddenly seemed as futile to me as trying to cure a pain in my foot by treating it as if it were separate from my whole body and mind, the whole life I was living” (14).
When I was in Bob’s class as an undergraduate, The Teaching of Writing in Secondary Schools (or some variation of that title), he had us all memorize the words of Basho, a Zen philosopher: Each day is a journey and the journey itself, home (14). I kind of bought it: yeah, life was a journey. Yeah, I can buy all this Buddhist-influenced, Camus-Sisyphean rebel stuff. But it can be so easy to forget this.
And so welcoming to be reminded.
When I think about the central question that I asked a few blog posts ago, “How can I sustain and deepen my selfhood from which good teaching comes in the atmosphere of an instition that, in Althusser’s word, ‘crushes’ me?“, I think about myself as a whole person. This is a journey towards finding how I can survive as a somewhat authentic self in a society wrought with oppression and flase consciousness.
Tremmel offers his “Four Pillars of Teaching and Practice”:
1. Survive.
2. Pay Attention.
3. Begin the Journey.
4. Stay on the Journey. (15)
So, I am still asking how I can survive…
Tremmel, Robert. Zen and the Practice of Teaching English. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
