Define Teaching: Explore. DIscover.

Two of my favorites have had deep nuggets of truth that were not the focus of a post. The first that got me think was dy/dan send out this tweet:

working definition: to teach is to develop habits of curiosity and then habits of thinking to resolve those curiosities.

Then Will Richarson wrote this great line in a post about what kind of education he wants for his kids.

More and more, all I want from my kids’ school is to help me identify what they love, what their strengths are, and then help them create their own paths to mastery of their passions.

It sounds like Will would like his kids to have Dan as a teacher.

I came to teaching from camp counseling. I still work there for part of the summer. I have often thought of my classroom exactly the same way that I thought of my cabins, how can we have the most fun possible while learning about what it means to be a young man in God's world. The motto there is Explore God's World, Discover God's Love.

I have modeled my teaching on that motto. Explore. Discover. I try to set up a place where we all dig in and explore around, bring back what piques our interest and discover what we can about living our lives together in this world. This might be way to idealistic for Dan, and because I focus on physics as the area I explore it might be to constrained for Will. It seems to me however that leading a good exploration develops curiosity, and discovering how what we explore fits into our lives is the creating paths and brain process that will allow us to explore more and better things.

I could never have clarified my thoughts about what I do and why I do it without Dan and Will helping me to see my world in new and different ways. Thanks.