Teaching is About Relationships

01/07/2008

Teaching is About Relationships

You can only go into the unknown when you have made friends with yourself.
Pema Chodrin

Colin Gibbs will edit the book about educating teachers that will be produced from the presentations and conversations happening at the Working Forum for Teacher Educators in Auckland, New Zealand, April 30 - May 2, 2008 (www.WorldForumFoundation.org/educators). In his book, To Be a Teacher: Journeys toward authenticity (New Zealand: Pearson Education New Zealand, 2006), Gibbs proposes that "being a teacher is about relationships." Here is what he has to say...

"Teaching is about relationships. The journey of becoming and being a teacher is unique for each teacher and yet depends on others. It involves seeking, constructing, and reconstructing meanings about our individuality as human beings and how this is expressed in our work and lives as teachers. This process calls on us to know our personal and professional identities. It is about developing our personal and professional identities, which we know are both real and true for us.

"To be a teacher, then, is about building authentic connections with oneself, both as a teacher and as a person — that is, nurturing what we call intra-connectedness. But it also involves developing authentic inter-connectedness with others such as students and parents, with the world around us, and with our personal place and presence in time."

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