This year at work I’m taking part in an instructional leadership group.  Every few weeks, I gather with co-workers to watch teaching samples, read a
ticles, and discuss best practices in the classroom in the hopes that
it be teachable and transferable.  And while I enjoy the time, I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read Carl Trueman’s recent First Things essay about teaching.  In “Teaching as Joyful Rebellion,” Trueman rues the reality that too often teaching is about anything but actual content.

Teaching—true teaching, not the mere imparting of techniques or earning potential—is perhaps the most delightful calling and privilege in the world. It has its challenges, but it brings incomparable joys. The second greatest joy I have as teacher is seeing that flash of light in a student’s eyes when a previously unknown or misunderstood concept suddenly becomes clear because of something I have said. And the greatest joy (albeit a rarer one) is the one I experience when a student writes or says something that indicates they have gone far beyond that which I, as a teacher, have been able to teach them. When they become greater, I delight that I become less. For such is the proper order of things, if teaching is truly about truth and not about power or making disciples. Yet neither joy is possible where there is no truth to discover and where the world is simply whatever the loudest and most aggressive among us care to claim that it is. Good teaching is a matter of metaphysics.

It’s a fair critique, I think.  At the very least, it’s the reminder that part of loving teaching means loving what you teach, perhaps even more than how you teach it.  You can read the entire post here.  It’s worth your time.

(image from epi.sc.edu)