working philosophy on education (spring '09)

I understand my role as a teacher/educator to be to invite people to knowledge and new experience,  to accompany them in their learning and growth as an ally and support person, and to actively acknowledge the whole, integrated person that each person is, even if I am teaching just one subject. 

Lately I have been thinking about how our culture often teaches, and how we insist that learner's (be they first graders or grad students) master certain tools. I am not so radical as to be ready to throw out all the old tools without trying them - I can get persnickety about grammar, group facilitation, and many other established ways of doing things. It's not that I'm beholden to the tools - I just think they might be useful, and we could be short changing ourselves by rejecting them. 

So, as a teacher I understand my job to be partly offering tools, but with a caveat "I offer this to you because it might be useful to you, and I want you to have useful things. If you discover that it is not useful, or that it is the wrong tool for the task, or more seriously that it detracts from the work and does not serve you, I will not be offended if you lay it down. If that happens, I very much encourage you to fashion new tools from the old ones (and to teach me how to use the new ones, old head that I am)."