Stina
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Glenn, I really enjoyed your analysis of the “middle way” in this essay. Such a helpful concept to keep in mind!
Yes, but if I’m being honest, that was not a concern for me.
I’m far from perfect and always have more to learn, but with more than two decades of teaching everything from middle-school theater to graduate level courses in tax law (plus a degree in education), I feel pretty good about my general ability to teach lots of stuff. My goals in taking this training were to further improve my ability to give meditation instruction, to better understand what I may not already know, and also to have the legitimacy of being able to say I completed a formal training.A few thoughts came up during class this week, so I’ll share them here in case it is of benefit to others. These are a few nuggets of teaching wisdom I have picked up from my teachers and my own experience over the years:
* You don’t need to be an expert to be a good teacher. Your students probably can’t tell whether you know 1% or 1000% more about a topic than they do and the best teachers will admit that they are still learning. I like to say that you don’t know what you don’t know until you try to explain it to another person, and in a good teaching environment you will learn a lot from your students.
* Admit when you don’t know something or are unsure. I have smart students that ask me lots of things I don’t know. There have been many times that I have to say “I don’t know, but let me think about it and get back to you.” Similarly, admit when you are wrong. No one knows everything and we all make mistakes. Your students will be forgiving of your ignorance and your imperfections if you are open and honest about them.
* Don’t expect that the nerves/fear will ever go away. The college professor who taught my education courses was the best teacher I have ever known. She taught thousands of students of all ages for decades. She was a true master and watching her teach was something to marvel. But she admitted to us that before every single class she ever taught, she was still nervous and secretly wished the fire alarm would go off. This isn’t a flaw; it’s a feature of a good teacher because it means you care.
I have no judgments on this topic other than each person must decide what is right for them based on their individual circumstances and needs.
For me, I am fortunate to have a full-time job that pays the bills and gives me health insurance, so I can choose whether I want to charge money for the things I do outside of that job (including teaching meditation). At the moment, I am mostly planning to teach friends who have told me they want to learn how to meditate and I am more than happy to give my time and energy to a friend in that way because the joy I receive in sharing something that is special to me with someone I love is a reward I value more than any additional money in my pocket. I may also do a free weekly meditation practice for my students/coworkers, but that would be within the hours of my job, so I view that as time I am already being paid for.
If I were to expand my teaching beyond friends or if I was starting to invest significantly more of my free time in teaching, then I do think there is a point that I would consider charging in some way.
My ideal learning environment is a small group where everyone has a chance to get to know each other and contribute to the discussion. My favorite experience in college was during a study abroad program where 80 students from my school went to live and study in a Dutch castle that the school owned (yes, it was a real castle with a real moat, so cool!). I was in the honors program, which had a required class that semester, but there were only 4 honors students at the castle so our “class” turned into a cozy seminar that was taught by the director of the program in a small meeting room on one of the upper floors of the castle. Our teacher was this beautiful, brilliant woman who spoke 7 languages and lead us in fascinating discussions about sociobiology each week while we sat around this old wooden table drinking tea. I wasn’t particularly interested in the topic initially, but the learning experience was so magical that it became my favorite class.
My least favorite learning experiences have been most of the corporate training programs I’ve encountered in my adult life. The absolute worst are the web-based learning modules with poorly-acted short videos and multiple-choice quizzes to make sure you actually watch the bad video. I also had a particularly bad experience during my first in-person training session when I started working in the tax group at EY. I was the only lawyer in a room full of accountants who were all far more familiar with accounting terminology that I was. I felt completely lost and the session was so fast-paced that neither the instructor nor the people at my table had the patience to help me get up to speed. My level of stress and feeling overwhelmed ballooned during the two hours and the only reason I passed the quiz at the end was because the instructor felt bad when I was the last person in the room retaking the quiz for the third time, nearly in tears thinking I was going to fail and lose my job, so they fed me enough right answers to get a passing score.
Hi Erin – I think you just described both my ideal and non-ideal learning environments as well. Love the small-group connections and I struggle to stay awake in the impersonal lecture-hall.
Hi Djuna, I also really enjoy it when teachers are honest, humble, and open about they ways in which they are still learning. It’s a big turn-off for me when a teacher (or boss) is extremely controlling and takes the attitude of someone who knows everything and isn’t open to questions or disagreements.
Hi Liana – this reminded me so much of my experience as a student teacher. It was definitely harder to keep those boundaries when I was younger and my students were much closer to me in age. Even now, I notice that I have a more familiar connection with some of my older students because the relationship with someone who is also an experienced professional feels closer to that of a colleague than a typical teacher/student.
Thank you for sharing this!**Warning: discussion of death and suicide below**
The reading this week really hit me. It made me remember one of the most difficult moments in my teaching career when I had to balance my own wellbeing, that of my students, and a lot of boundaries. It was also an experience in which I felt incredibly alone.
We were a week or two into the COVID lockdown and I was trying to manage working as the director of a graduate program (in which I also taught) while also caring for a 3-month old infant and 3-year-old preschooler without daycare or any in-person “village” for support. Suffice to say, that situation was already difficult. But it was about to get so much worse.
I received a call from my dean to let me know that one of my students had been found dead in her apartment by the police and that the cause of death, which I was told I could not share with anyone, was suicide. I won’t go into the details of my own grief here, other than to acknowledge its presence.
Then came the flood of phone calls and emails from my students.
I quickly learned that there were stories, relationships, and tensions that I had not been aware of in my role as their teacher (good boundaries at work). But in this time of crisis, everything came pouring out. They wanted me to know what was going on, wanted me to give them answers for things that were unanswerable. Many of them wanted to know what had happened; how had their friend died. One student in particular confided in me that he was worried that his relationship with this student had caused her to take her life and he begged me to confirm or deny whether I knew what had happened. I felt strongly that I did not want to lie, so I could only repeat that there were many details I did not know (which was true) and that I could not share those that I did, even if I wanted to (which was also true).I have no training in counseling and I repeatedly told my students that they should seek counseling support from the counseling services at the school because I could not be their counselor. But as their teacher and their advisor, I also felt responsible for them. I felt like I needed to listen, so that is what I did, as much as I could manage in between caring for myself and my family. There were also moments that I had to say “no”. I could not take calls at all hours of the day and night. I could not be a crisis counselor when the school counseling office was overwhelmed with early-COVID crisis chaos. I do not think I handled this situation perfectly, but I did my best to “pacify” and be present when I could during an incredibly difficult time for my students, myself, and the world.
I’ve had many other experiences in which students have confided in me. When someone is struggling academically, they often come to me for support and want me to understand what is going on in their life that has caused them to miss class, to lose focus, and so on. Again, I think it is important that I listen. Most of the time I cannot solve their problems and I don’t try, but I can direct them to support resources and help them to navigate academic solutions when they cannot continue on their current path.
As both a teacher and a student, I have come to appreciate the importance of being clear about boundaries. It can be hard to tell someone “no”, and it can be hurtful to be told “no”, but it only becomes harder and more hurtful when the lines get blurry because the teacher hasn’t clearly communicated their boundaries to the student.
Hi Elizabeth. I love the way you explain the need to have generosity tempered by wisdom. I’ve been fortunate to have a good career with financial stability, but I am constantly feeling a sense of guilt for not being more generous to the friends and family (and strangers) who have struggled (although, like you, I usually respond with an open hand). Having the wisdom to know when and how generosity is actually helpful and when I am simply giving something away because I feel bad about having more when someone else has less is a real challenge for me.
Hi Elizabeth. I can definitely relate to your experience with the ups and downs of patience. I’ve also noticed that I am far less quick to anger than I used to be (again, thank you Pema Chodron). But also noticing that sometimes that anger was serving as a protective defense and feeling exposed and vulnerable without it.
I feel most connected to the paramita of Exertion (aka Joyful Effort/Diligence/Perseverance).
When I took the refuge vow, it was a surprise and delight when Susan gave me the name Tsondru Norbu, Exertion Jewel. As someone who rejected the tradition of changing my last name following marriage, I did not expect to adopt a new Buddhist name following this ceremony or even that this new name would carry any particular meaning or relevance for me. Yet somehow it feels absolutely perfect. Thank you, Susan, for that gift.
There are so many reasons this paramita resonates with me. Astrologically, I could tell you it’s because of my Venus in Capricorn in the 5th house (Venus in her joy with Capricorn energy of diligence, effort, and perseverance) with a kick from Mars in Virgo energy in my first house.
If you ask my husband what made him decide to marry me, he will tell you “persistence” (we dated for eight years while he sorted through his doubts about commitment, and we’ve now been together for more than 20 years). I find joy in putting effort toward something I believe in, even when the outcome is uncertain.
I have always liked a challenge. If you want to convince me to do something, tell me it’s going to be difficult. I might get frustrated, I might need to take a break, but odds are good I will keep coming back until I figure it out.
One aspect of Exertion paramita I really appreciate is the emphasis on the joyful nature of the action. When life gives me challenges, I will try to find the moments of joy in the midst of the struggles. One of my favorite parables is that of the Tigers and the Strawberry that I feel encapsulates this.
Hi Erin – I also had the experience of realizing that I forgot something in my instruction (oh no, I forgot to tell her what to do with her hands!). Fortunately, my partner clearly knew where her hands needed to be and I could see that, so I could tell that I didn’t need to give her that reminder.
Hi Liana! I can definitely relate to the experience of thinking about how I would give instruction as I am sitting. When I practice on my own, I definitely have an internal voice that I give myself instruction to take my seat, establish my posture, and focus my attention on my breath — sometimes my own “voice” and sometimes echoes of those who have given me instruction in the past, or a mix of the two. For me, I feel it’s actually really helpful to have that initial self-instruction rather than just jumping right it to the practice as a way of initially grounding and setting my intention and, reflecting on last week’s subject of lineage, I think I’m also connecting with those who have instructed me when I hear their voices in my self-instruction monologue.
I have given meditation instruction before, so I didn’t have the same kind of nervous energy that I did when I was first starting. This is also such a lovely group of fellow learners that it is easy for me to feel at ease, even if I hadn’t had prior experience. As I brought up after, my main uncertainty is when to speak again after giving the initial instruction. I’m looking forward to practicing more with using my intuition to sense whether to do more/less of this depending on who I am instructing.
This particular experience was a little challenging because I’m dealing with the worst sinus infection of my life and I can’t hear out of my left ear, which makes my own voice echo in my head in an uncomfortable way. So giving instruction while feeling all the congestion in my head left me a little out of sorts, but I was glad to hear that my partner didn’t pick up on any of my physical discomfort and it was so nice to hear that she felt like I was able to be very present with her during the experience.
I really enjoy doing this, and afterwards I feel an incredible sense of gratitude for the people who have allowed me to share this experience with them.