The challenge of being a teacher: Can you move your fire to the group?
Everyone knows something significant, that others would benefit from knowing, but not everyone can teach so others can receive that knowing.
To me, several insights for answering this question are hidden inside the question itself. What is your fire? What is the passion that causes you to be absorbed and energized? That causes you to be responsible for feeding its spark into life, for wanting to share the passion?
Who is the group? How to identify–among the crowds of seekers–those who are ready to receive the lighted branch you are holding? And who is responsible if the hand receiving the fire is burned?
And perhaps the most unmanageable question of all: How do you move this fire, this knowing? That labor will require as many forms as there are students and settings: creating inspired stories, providing solitude in a place apart, being a conjurer of experiences beyond the ordinary.
Can you move your fire to the group?
This question is the title of the 27th image in the series I am painting, based on dreams received when creating the Journey Oracle divination deck. When I reflect on being a teacher, I think the image contains some profound insights into how this happens successfully.
The Campanula flowers in this painting are the group. They have diversity, but more similarity. They are different ages and are varied in their ability to receive the bee, but they are the same “family”. In the way that students can have different ages and levels of experience, and yet share the same level of curiosity, of willingness to receive what the teacher is offering.
The bee in this painting is the teacher’s fire. The bee’s energy, intention and commitment to its purpose is a beautiful metaphor for the fire of sharing knowledge, of moving from each student to the next, taking and giving in equal measure.
Perhaps the hardest part of this challenge for the teacher is how to move this knowing. The bee’s wings are mostly transparent, and certainly fragile, and yet are sturdy and resilient to shifts in wind and weather. Just as a teacher’s strategy for sharing knowledge must be clear, easily shaped to each moment, and yet coherent in its larger vision of value and meaning for the student.
So. Can you move your fire to the group?
Most of the time–yes.
I watch the bees.
