Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge-and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.

The ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no self outside of relationship.

For me, teaching is about weaving a web of connectedness between myself, my students, the subject I'm teaching, and the larger world.

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.

You don't become a good teacher by applying techniques; you don't become a good teacher by using the latest hot methodologies that are being promoted in this or that handbook.

... the stranger is not a threat but an opportunity to grow in my view of reality, to grow in my own sense of possibility

One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to "fix" it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery.