Transformation: an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed
Transforming: to change in composition or structure,
to change the outward form or appearance of,
to change in character or condition
My identity as a teacher is much like my process of recognizing myself as an artist. When I am teaching and making art, I transform from a quiet, shy, soft-spoken individual into a loud, take-no-shit, confident woman who knows a few things and has very deep feelings about them. In other words, I am both the stereotype of the eldest daughter being a bossy know-it-all and a riotous fiend for harnessing my intellect (along with my drive for positive social change) to shape young minds and the world around us.
My transformation is contagious. My students transform into critical thinkers, challengers of the status quo, artists in their own right who will harness the future to shape it better than today.
I inherited the Teacher within me from my Mother, also a Teacher. The teacher I am today would be nothing without her and my teachers from adolescence. Their transformations each school day were contagious. I admired their ability to enrapture my attention with a single story, assignment, or technique. I desired their talent for stopping quarrels, engaging conversations, and teaching each person, no matter their background, how to be better than the day before. Not every single one did so, but the ones I remember shaping me certainly did. Each of them taught me how to be brave, ask questions, how to fail and get back up again, how to exist in a cruel world and still be kind, how to find myself, how to search for what I lost and find myself again, and how to still keep moving each new day.
From Mrs. Corbett to Mrs. McNally to Mrs. Rivers to Mrs. Phyllis Cunningham to Mrs. Pasely to my Mother to my Wife to the Teachers before me to the Teachers after me and back to Myself; we transform together as one.
The greatest lesson I ever learned was that I am meant to share my knowledge, not to hoard it like gold, keeping it safe in a vault somewhere, only to be used on special occasions. Instead, to share my knowledge meant moving away from individualism and back into community-minded living. By choosing teaching as my career path, I could ensure that I was an active participant in the community and world in which I lived. Every student that walks through my classroom door receives a fair, equitable, and free education. These students in turn teach me how to be less rigid, to think like a kid, to see the world with brighter eyes, to find new meaning to life, to keep learning and growing. Education in my classroom is a safe place for students to learn, fail, and try again. I honor each student as their own individual person. I also remind them that they too must live in community with one another by honoring each other’s humanity and right to a fair, equitable, and free education. I hope in return we can build a better tomorrow when we remember the other as our neighbor, not enemy.
We inform the other and share our findings along the way. In a cyclical fashion, we shape one another. We transform into something brighter and brand new.
The future then transforms too.
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