[art by Perla*]

…these forceful teachers did have a few qualities in common: they enjoyed using their minds; the paid attention to what was going on outside the classroom; they were demanding and generous and patient; they cared passionately about learning; they lived in light of what they knew. They left their mark on me not merely because they passed on knowledge, although that was crucial, but because they demonstrated ways of being fully and richly human.

[...]

“I thought professors had it all together,” a woman said.

“I’m hardly a professor,” I answered.

“You don’t know everything there is to know about these books?” a man asked.

I laughed. “Not by a long sight.”

“Like what Moby Dick stands for? Or why Anna throws herself under a train?”

“I’ve got my hunches,” I said, “and I’ve read what a lot of other people think. But I don’t know fur sure. Nobody knows for sure. Not even Melville and Tolstoy.”

“No wonder literature’s so confusing,” someone said.

“Just like life,” another student remarked.

“Just like life,” I agreed, “only books hold still so we can look at them.”

After that exchange I felt less afraid. I kept making notes for discussion, but left them behind when I entered the classroom. I tried to ask only genuine questions, ones for which I had no certain answers. I learned to bear silence, realizing that it might cover the presence as well as the absence of thought. I allowed my enthusiasm as well as my ignorance to show. When I got worked up, as I often did, about a book or an idea or a cause, the students watched me with shy bemusement, and when I hushed they spoke up with passion of their own. The excitement in their voices gave me courage to keep on trying this difficult profession.”

–Scott Russell Sanders
from “Teacher” found in The Country of Language