12-15-2021—My first passion is nature study. As a child I studied or better yet was organically and rhythmically present to what I was seeing and experiencing. No agenda other than to be attentive to the mystery. As I grew older and was normed into the Western rational and intellectual tradition. I learned that knowing the world and self, meant dividing wholeness into parts, and then naming each element with precise scientific language. If I could name it, I thought, I could “own” some part of what it was. Now, after years of training in rationalism it seems nearly impossible to return to my earlier state of oneness with nature. It seems that once educated in the Western tradition it is a challenge to un-educate oneself from that way of seeing and experiencing the world. It is, I think, like the power of reading. Once you know how to read it is impossible to unlearn reading. Once educated in Western ways of knowing how can a person not see the world objectively and distanced? Although I can’t erase Western epistemologies (I’m not suggesting that is a goal) I can add to that base and expand beyond its limitations. That is the direction I lean these days emphasizing relationship and reciprocity with nature.
It strikes me that the experience of becoming a teacher has parallels to my shifting connection to nature. Many teachers start their career at an early age, long before they have the words to articulate their deep longing for the craft. I know of countless educator who as Kindergartners, gathered up dolls, teddy bears, action figures and ponies to create a classroom. There was some “intuitive drive”, of unknown origin and unknown direction, that compelled them to act like a teacher. Shortly on the heels of this agenda free, natural state of being a teacher, came K-12 schooling. The years of watching teachers teach is much like learning to read, once you see it and experience being taught, it is nearly impossible to unlearn what you have been informally absorbing for 13 years. It is possible, I believe, much like my integrative and holistic relationship with nature, to add to this early framework and expand its potential. An educator can never leave or fully unlearn what has seeped into their sinew and bones about teaching. But they can identify that which is false to their being, toxic and harmful to self and others, and incorporate new, more life-giving practices into their sense of the role of teacher.
Let me offer an example from my experience with nature study that might provide a metaphor for how the integration of the old and new might occur. I remember the first time I saw whirligig beetles moving in mass on the surface of a pond. They were always in a group and seemed to be heading everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was as if they held no concept equating to a straight line. They were in constant motion, but not in the same direction for any predicable length of time. I was caught up in the guessing game of which way an individual beetle would turn. As I watched, the obviousness of this behavior was clear, any predator would be hard pressed to aim their attack with precision. And adding to the challenge was the question as to which beetle to single out since so many were moving in so many different directions at once.
When considering an appropriate metaphor to capture this dual way of seeing, the Western rational and the ineffable-integrative, I remembered a curious feature of whirligig beetles. They have two-sets of eyes. One set pointing up to the sky and a second set scanning for danger coming from the depths of the water. Furthermore, there is more to life then evading the prospect of being eaten. As a beetle, as with humans, you must eat too. And having four-eyes increases the chances of seeing more things to consume.
I was reminded of my childhood investigations of whirligig beetles and their two-sets of eyes when teaching a book to graduate students about humanism and education. The first set of eyes is represented by the book, Reimagining the Call to Teach by David T. Hansen. The text is a detailed and wonderful investigation of the moral and ethical core of teaching. In language I rarely hear applied to the calling of teaching, Hansen speaks of the mystery of teaching as commitment to self (the ethical) and to students (the moral). He takes a philosophical stance dedicated to the “why” questions of self as human in the world and self in relation to the role of teacher serving others (colleagues, students and society). He firmly places teaching and teachers “in” and “with” the temporal, world and concrete experience.
As much as I appreciate Hansen’s analysis and find it compelling, there is another set of eyes through which to see the essence of teaching. A practice in education that adds to my Western thinking, that I have been leaning into for many years, the holistic-prophetic tradition. I valued it for its attention to the spiritual, soulful and ineffable. My thinking has been informed by experience and the scholarship of many writers and thinkers including bell hooks, Laura Rendon, Dwayne Huebner, and Rachel Kessler. Parker Palmer, a noteworthy member of this tradition, frames the core question energizing the work of the holistic-prophetic tradition as; “who is the self that teaches?” These educators are energized by the ways of being present to the mystery of teaching that is “in” and “with” the eternal, ineffable and transcendent.
This brings me back to whirligig beetles and the possibility of framing teaching as a four-eyed craft. I imagine that one way to be successful as a teacher is to live like a whirligig beetle. To fully commit to the love of the craft, to gather together with like-hearted/headed educators into a community where predatory forces find it difficult to pick off individuals and to cultivate the capacity of four-eyed teaching. This means two-eyes pointing toward the temporal and two eyes scanning the spaces of the eternal. Teachers are already versed in seeing many ways at once. Just ask any student if a teacher has eyes in the back of their head. The opportunity, it seems, is to validate seeing in two ways at once. Teaching, at its best, is a both/and not either/or endeavor. It is about teaching with both the technical and the ineffable in accordance with what emphasis is most desirable in the moment.
How developed are both sets of your eyes? Is one more developed than the other? What would it take to have both sets functioning together in binocular vision of teaching, serving learners and developing a robust notion of self as teacher?
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