It has been good fun and has occasioned reflection about how much of what we do as members of organizations is a form of teaching. All of us teach and learn and in our teaching and learning we are part of a community that extends from classrooms to street corners to boardrooms to offices. I have been struck by how teaching is so much about translating ideas and values. We teach so that those with whom we are engaged might share our excitement and passion for those ideas and values. For example, when my students had trouble with the idea of myths and how they shape culture, we talked about Bobby Knight and the myth of basketball in Indiana.
Teaching is about modeling a life that is infused with reflection and intellectual engagement.
Teaching is about moral imagination, finding in our subject matter the stuff to build a world, make a life, and rehearse a vision. Teaching is about democracy, translating the sense of ownership and responsibility that each of our students must have to negotiate life in a healthy and vital society. An apple for all you teachers. I had the privilege of serving for several years on the boards of directors for a dance company and a theater company in Chicago. I always marveled at the ways in which the idea of an ensemble or company the accepted way of describing a group of artists performing together had important things to teach all of us about common purpose and organizational forms.