In the world of academia, people don't break the ice by asking you where you're from, they ask you what your interests are, that is, what you are interested in researching and knowing more about. The way one of my professors explained it, "We all dig ourselves very deeply into one hole, but often enough, we come out and meet with each other to find out what each of us has found in our holes." The metaphor may be apt, but I'm finding that this hole-digging is a lot more public - and not as isolate - as I originally thought. "Publish or perish", they say - nobody's going to pay you to go so far down a hole you never come out.
Being back in the world of academia now, I'm wondering if there's a hole for me to dig somewhere. Not that I feel necessarily drawn to the ivory tower stigma, and don't hear muffled questions of "When are you going to get a real job?" from certain members of my family. I don't know what they think I'm doing here; I feel pretty exhausted at the end of the day.
But I'll tell you something: I love it.
I really do. I'm realizing that - stigma schmigma - this world of reading, thinking, writing, synthesizing, sharing, criticizing, revising, revisiting, developing, theorizing, *publishing* ... all of this may, at first glance, have nothing to do with how I understand myself as a teacher, but it has everything to do with how I understand myself as a learner.
This presents a certain predicament that I've been mulling over, namely, the question of how a teacher balances her calling to be a teacher with her history and fervor of being a learner? "No matter what profession you pursue," my mother has always said, "you will always be a teacher." It seems that, in following the call to explore how I am a teacher, I am constantly exploring how I am a learner, as well. There are two sides to the coin. Whoever I am as a teacher must be informed by, or at least complement, who I am as a learner; otherwise, I will never be completely satisfied in my work, and I will not do it well.
So, what
are my interests? Well, that's a very good question. The easy answer is that I have a lot of interests, as most young learners do. But I am enjoying, still, walking around, looking at all the holes people are digging, peering in to see what I see, and moving on to see what others are up to. As I walk, these are the questions (and the fields of study) I'm pondering:
- How did education get to be the way it is now? (History of education)
- What are we doing in education anyway? (Philosophy of education)
- What does it and its effects look like on the ground? (Dual focus: Sociology of education (outward effects) and developmental psychology (inward effects))
- What light does knowledge about education in different cultures shed on our understanding of education? (Anthropology of education)
So, there's about four or five lifetimes worth of scholarship right there, but, like I said, I enjoy walking around between them at the moment. I think they are becoming like landmarks, like the numbers on the clock that I keep rotating between as I consider what I see and understand of education today. They are my table legs, so to speak, as I consider what I will do with this table top, what to create upon it, what to carve into it, what works to line along the edge, what papers to write upon it.
It is a powerful experience to feel as if on the threshold of something important, even if it will only ever be important to me. I know I have always been a learner, and always will be, but I have never felt this piece of me so strongly assert itself. It is confusing, and it is changing the way I think about my future, changing what I see of the path ahead of me. But I can tell it is a more honest path, so I'm not afraid in my confusion and questioning. I'm trying to stick to my landmarks, my questions, my
interests, if you will.
... That is, if only to have something to say when they ask.
In the meantime, I am working on figuring out how to make it possible for folks to access a few papers I've written for my classes. I find them very interesting, though it is frustrating to put so much effort and interest into something with only a judgment at the end, rather than feedback that could turn into an actual conversation. I suppose I can only consider them exercises for the real thing one day.
