Those who can, teach

That phrase has been with me since I was a child but I can't remember where I first saw it or why. I think it was on a poster my teacher parents had and I remember pondering why the comma was where it was and how the meaning of the phrase would change, if the comma was placed elsewhere or taken out altogether.

Those, who can teach. Those, who can, teach. Those who can, teach. Those who can teach.

I remember spending a good amount of time trying to figure out the different meanings and playing around with the comma and the words. Now, those mental exercises seem a clear foreshadowing of what I've dedicated my life to doing: teaching about the power of words and the power of language. Teaching about how literature illuminates and reveals life.

I had an epiphany recently while talking to someone else about my teaching. As I articulated the reasons why it is so apparent that I am in love with the experience of teaching, I discovered that the reason I love teaching at the college level so much is that I had sorely missed those endless discussions late into the night about everything and anything, which my college experience was filled with.

I discovered, as I grew older and my life veered into so many different paths away from the classroom, that those days of discussing life and books and movies and politics like your life depended on it, gave way to the real world of duties and work and little unoccupied time to spend waxing intellectual. College is a privileged time, indeed. Only I wasn't aware then of how very privileged.

Now, teaching at a top small liberal arts college where most of my students come ready to rumble and are eager to engage in those conversations about life and books and movies and politics like their lives depended on it, I'm in my own personal heaven. I get to initiate and participate in those discussions for a living and I get paid for it (a lot less than teaching should be worth, granted, but I'm not in this for the money). There can be no greater privilege for me.

That's why almost each and every time I walk out of my classroom I do so with a big grin on my face and the feeling that I've thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual grapplings we've had together as a class. I learn as much as they do about the texts, about who my students are as people and as sentient beings, about the world the literature illuminates and how, about myself as a person and a teacher.

I am a teacher. I am among those who can teach. There is no greater privilege for me.