There’s something wonderful about teaching. I don’t mean teaching in the professional sense, I mean teaching in the personal sense. When you are forced to explain something to someone, to help them understand, that can be an amazing thing, if you let it.
Sometimes you’re the expert, and sometimes everyone else nominates you as the ‘expert’. You’re forced to explain something to people that, at least it seems, know more about the subject than you do. But you stand, and you start your nervous ‘instruction’
More and more I am taken with the word formation as a substitute for education. Because its not about conveyance of facts, its about forming ideas and people. And more often than not, the person that is formed the most is the one who is tasked with forming others. That’s what makes teaching so special to me. It’s that preparation, the explanation of something that I supposedly know already that teaches me more than anything has before. The person that learns the most is the one behind the podium.
I think its that preparation, the self-examination that happens. When you are trying to communicate an idea, you ask yourself, “Do I really understand this well enough?” Its that freedom of exploration and self discovery that makes teaching/forming wonderful and exciting.
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