Music: Amos Lee, "Supply and Demand"

I have a bunch of stuff I want to write about today. I'm reading over student blogs. I really am enjoying this assignment. There are a lot of students, and so, a lot to read and I can't read everything. But I really look forward to the time, at the end of the week, when I can sit down and read what is going on in students' lives and hear their stories about school. And I love doing it via blogs. I love that I can read what they are writing and I can comment (I can type TWICE as fast as I can write with a pen!). I love the interactiveness of this assignment. In some ways, what I've done is taken the old "keep a journal" assignment and updated it for a new time. But, I'm wondering if there is anything else going on here, other than just switching an age-old practice (journaling) from analog to digital. I should think about this a bit more.

I learned something really interesting from one of the students this afternoon. The student is a tutor and she was writing about her experience working as a peer tutor. This is the passage that really made me stop and think:

Professors can be intimidating, but tutoring and learning from your peers is so much less intimidating. Sometimes, its easier when hearing the lesson from another perspective, and peers are in many ways much more approachable. Peer to Peer, Tutor to Tutee. Which is which? Am i the tutor or the tutee?...

Over the years, I have often thought how important it is for people who teach things to continue trying to learn new things. I teach writing and I teach tennis. Right now, there is not much new that I am trying to learn, other than how to be a good dad. A few years back, though, I tried to take up piano. I took lessons for about two years. I even performed at two recitals where I was the only adult present with a whole slew of kids! I'll never forget sitting at the piano in this recital hall in Boston and realizing I had NO IDEA how to begin the piece I was supposed to perform. That moment was INCREDIBLY powerful...I haven't thought of it in some time. I sat there for a good minute or so just COMPLETELY unable to recall how the piece was supposed to begin. So, I went on and played the second piece first and prayed to god that the first piece would come to me while I was doing the second piece.

Sorry for that diversion...anyway, I was saying...how important it is for people who teach stuff to keep learning new stuff and to keep putting themselves in the position of being the novice, the learner, the student.

What the student made me think about, in her posting, above, is the importance of the other side to this coin. It may be just as important for students to have moments where they get to be teachers as it is for teachers to have moments where they get to be students. Why? Well, if you are helping someone else, you learn A) a heck about the subject you are teaching (some people say you don't really know a subject or a skill until you have to teach it to someone else) B) a heck of a lot about how learning works (or doesn't work)...when you are responsible for helping someone, you have to get creative about doing it. You learn how difficult teaching is and you gain an appreciation for the good teachers that you might not have otherwise had. YOu gain an appreciation as someone who also teaches. C) When you teach someone else, it's hard not to end up having that mirrored back to you and causing you to think about who you are as a learner and how you learn. You learn about yourself. D) When you have played the role of teaching, I think you may take learning, in general, more seriously. But I'm not sure about this one.

So, there may really be something to this. Perhaps all education should contain both of these kinds of moments for those engaged:

teachers to become students
students to become teachers

Thanks R. for teaching me that.