May I sat for nearly an hour and watched a mother robin feeding her three babies. Spending an hour this way seemed uncharacteristically frivolous and self-indulgent at the time, but I realize today that I witnessed a metaphor for teaching.
Teaching is the acquisition, assimilation, and articulation of knowledge.
Just as the mother robin hunted food, chewed it up, then spit it into the mouths of her young, teachers search for knowledge, synthesize it, then present it to students in more palatable form. All factors in this tripartite equation carry equal weight, and we are fortunate to find ourselves in a college environment that encourages and rewards all of these elements crucial to the enterprise of good teaching. The acquisition of knowledge is sometimes referred to as scholarship. All teachers begin as scholars, but often the fulfillment of classroom responsibilities leaves little energy for active research projects. A good teacher recognizes the importance of active scholarly pursuits, even those that yield no immediate application.