The Beautiful Mystery of Teaching

Photo by the author of the San Miguel, Mexico classroom. The student at the end of the story was sitting in the chair marked by the arrow.

I’ve been on this side of a classroom for 53 years. With 44 6th graders in 1973, it was about survival, for them and me. Hobbes was right about nations and schoolrooms; without order, nothing good occurs.

My teaching career was a winding yellow brick road of discovery. For too long, I thought I was the wizard.

Photo by Rebecca Wiese

San Miguel’s Instituto Allende’s Lifelong Learning classroom is a long way from St. John’s Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa. For my middle schoolers, I’d focus the lesson on kilometers (2783) and miles (1729). For my undergraduates, why does the United States persist with the Imperial System?

For the most recent group of mature learners, the topic was James Baldwin’s United States of America. “Does anyone have a Baldwin story?” I asked.

“In Paris, in 1960, I noticed this young black man typing every day at this outdoor coffee shop. I sat down and…”

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