Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

The teachers who have had the most impact on me and on most learners I know are teachers whose "selfhoods" have been deeply invested in what they are doing.

Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.

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

I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it.