Learning practice

Beginning next week, for the first time in years, I'll be enrolled in classes. I decided to do this last fall, when I discovered some impressive work that had been created by a particular language institute. Knowing already that I wanted to spend some time in France, I decided that this would be the perfect place: a new region to discover, an organized program, and a month spent just thinking about how to be a better French teacher.

Of course, as soon as I saw how perfect it all was, I began to worry. I prefer traveling to destinations where I have no expectations and no one expects anything much of me. It's easier to learn when everything you do is learning. After one day in Senegal, for example, my knowledge of Senegal had already increased a hundred-fold. But France is a place where I am now supposed to be some sort of expert. How am I supposed to enjoy learning when I feel as if everything I learn is only proof of how little I knew before?

The fear of making a fool of myself, or worse, being exposed as a fool with pretenses of intelligence, may be one of the best lessons I can learn now. I have often felt, as many teachers do, that my success as a teacher depends on demonstrating what I know, on show confidence, on putting on a performance of mastery. But what does that communicate? What kind of class is it, when we know things only so that we can be in control, or seem worthy of our position of authority?

We may command the classroom, but it's all too easy to play the role of the wise teacher and to start to believe in one's own fictional persona. Worse, that persona can come between us -- and here I mean me -- and the students. A persona needs care, it has to be maintained. Do I have time to appear impressively learned and authoritative and to pay attention to what my students are telling me? Maybe others can manage that, but I can't.

I have asked for a chance to learn, and I think I'm getting it in the way I like the least. But maybe if I am sufficiently uncomfortable in this perfect situation, I will actually learn something. At the very least, I'll be a step closer to the feeling of being a student who's not sure of getting an A.