“A student once asked his teacher, ‘No matter what lies ahead, how do I teach?’ The teacher quickly replied, ‘You teach through daily life.’ This concept is at the very center of teaching. The principles of teaching are directed toward all of one’s existence, not just the part that takes place in the classroom.” This rewording of this quotation explains the devotion that teaching really takes. It explains that once you decide to become a teacher it becomes the center of your life. For me personally as soon as I decided I wanted to teach I began to realize things that I needed to improve upon in order to be a good teacher. In everything I do I think of myself as a teacher, the same way in everything a Tea Master does he is a Tea Master. Also this quote reminds me that I need to live my life fully in order to run my classroom because I know that my students will learn most from me that way. What I mean by this is my students will learn best if I have life experiences that I can relate to what I am teaching them. “You teach through daily life.”
As “Tea Life, Tea Mind” states the Way of Tea is to teach a way of life through a cup of tea. In a sense, to me, that is what a teacher is expected to do. A teacher is expected to teach children a certain way of life. A teacher is expected to teach her students how to be a functional citizen of his/her community. It is expected that schools show students what is important to his/her community so that when the student leaves the school system he/she understands the culture he/she is entering. Society expects schools to produce productive citizens and in order to be productive the students must be informed. That is the teacher’s task, to make sure her students are informed. Using the priniciples of the Way of Tea I plan to inform my students that learning is enjoyable and valuable.
The story line of “Kill Bill” is one of revenge. The revenge of a Samurai, revenge against people the Samurai once cared for greatly but because of who she was and what had happened to her she had to carry out her revenge. This movie shows the devotion a Samurai has the same way “Tea Life, Tea Mind” showed the devotion a Tea Master has. In one scene, particularly, the strong emotions involved in this Samurai’s devotion to her revenge rip into the hearts of the viewers. In this scene the Samurai finds her long last friend and current enemy, O-Ren Ishii. After a long battle with a number of O-Ren’s bodyguards, the two long last Samaria friends met in a snowy Japanese garden. There the two begin to battle and after both had been wounded they back slowly into their respective corners. This is where the devotion of a Samurai shows, the devotion to never give up on a fight, the will to complete a battle, a mission. And as the two woman stand in their corners, tears streaming down their faces, they pay their respects to each other as friends and prepare to fight until one can no longer fight.
This scene I feel shows devotion in a powerful way. Now I realize that this devotion to kill is not a devotion that one should be praising but when trying to understand devotion this extreme I feel makes the feeling real. This reminds me that there has to be a reason for your devotion. This Samurai was devoted to her revenge and it makes me wonder what my devotion really is. I am devoted to teaching but why? The only real answer I can think of is anger. I am devoted to teaching because I am angry. I am angry because even though I went to a blue ribbon school my whole life I feel my education was not a good education. I had good teachers but all together I did not learn and because of that I am angry. I am angry to see most of my peers did not learn very much from their schooling either. This makes me angry and because of that I am devoted to changing education.
Now going back to that pin, my goal as an educator or I should restate, what I think my goal as an educator is that I should allow my students to learn, not make them. I realize, as I stated before, that this is an extremely romantic idea but I do believe that children have an innate want to learn that schools have somehow taken away. I realize that because of principals and parents and laws and thousands of other reasons, I will not be able to allow the children in my class to learn whatever they want to learn while I simply help. Although I do think that children should be learning in this way in public schools I do realize that that is not going to be the case anytime soon, so in the mean time I plan on teaching my students to learn in order to learn. I know that that concept seems obvious; of course you learn to learn. But the question is: do you really? I know that I, along with many of my peers, cram for exams. That is not learning to learn that is trying to memorize in order to regurgitate information on a test. My goal is to show my students that it is fun to learn.
I want my students to be excited to go to school and I don’t mean just while they are in my class. I want to get to the students while they are young and show them that they can enjoy learning even if it seems boring. I realize that I can not make every subject that I teach fun for everyone but I will be able to make most subjects interesting for most students and that’s what is important.
I suppose that my main goal really is to enjoy my time with each one of my students. My goal as a teacher is to help students feel that being educated is important and enjoyable. I want to get to know my students and I want to have personal experience with them so that I can fully explain to them what it is that will make learning interesting for them.
In order to complete my goal as an educator I realize that I must have a balance between the devotion of a Tea Master and a Samurai. I have to be a fully devoted teacher. I must be calm, peaceful and caring the way a Tea Master is towards her devotion to the Way of Tea. While I must also be strong, driven, and shrewd the way a Samurai is towards her devotion to a battle. It is the balance of the two that I must achieve. In order to complete my goal as an educator I must be calm and caring while working with my students. I must act as a Tea Master in my classroom, fully respecting my students while presenting a way of life to them in order for them to be comfortable and willing to learn. I must act as a Samurai when my methods are questioned or I feel that a student will just never be interested. It is important that I never give up the way a Samurai will never give up and I must always be a peaceful perfectionist the way a Tea Master is only then will I be the teacher I wish to be.
