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How is your medicine utilized in your teaching? I’m no medical doctor, but I figure that any medicine that imposes on the body and does not work with the body will ultimately cause more harm than good. Our bodies are brilliant, and they point toward life. If they wanted to kill us, well, we’d be dead. But our bodies are keeping us alive in ways we can and cannot name. I think this is the same with teaching. Our students come to us with worlds of brilliance. Their ideas are keeping those worlds alive in ways they can and cannot name. My job as an educator is not to impose on them. My job is to help them be aware of that brilliance and share it with others. This may mean reintroducing educational nutrients they may be deficient in. Or removing toxic ideologies that cause harm and hinder learning. It’s weird, though. Sometimes I think I’ve been trained to be radiation, and that my students’ curiosity and self-worth are some kind of cancer that I must kill. Or, I’m trained to be insulin that’s priced out of the market. You need this, but can’t afford it. Or maybe I’ve been trained to be something like Ozempic; meant to teach and treat the heart, but utilized as a way to look good for others. In many ways, we are training our students to be aides in the healing process of others. Whether that is by being a spiritual guide, or working at a nonprofit that helps bring in resources, or creating art that brings healing. And as comforting as that may be, we all (us and students included) are working to be healing in the midst of needing our own. I often think of how this process connects with our teaching. Allow me to share a couple of metaphors that help me. Tell me what ails you: Doctors may know a lot, but they don’t know everything. I have never met a doctor who could look at me and instantly tell me what is wrong (although, as a plus-sized Black woman, I’ve had more than enough doctors try). Doctors hold both a wealth of knowledge and access to more resources that aid that knowledge. Despite this, part of the diagnosis must include what the patient can articulate about what ails them. It is in the conversation between doctor and patient that a diagnosis is determined. I think this is also similar to teaching. As educators, we have a wealth of knowledge and access to resources. But it is when we can cultivate a learning environment where students can articulate their educational needs, histories, and discoveries that together we can create the kinds of learning environments where students can grow. There is no such thing as a magic pill, although I wish there were. Too often, pop culture medicine influencers, businesses, and the like are trying to find the one thing that will cure all that ails us. But no matter how powerful a supplement or pill is, there is no one thing that cures us. Our healing requires (and deserves) an ecosystem of help. Yes, it may include traditional forms of medicine. But it also includes natural remedies like exercise, play, meditation, less stress, eradication of systems of oppression, and laughter. Similarly, teaching requires more than just readings, lectures, papers, and tests. It requires us to understand how our pedagogical tools are part of an educational ecosystem that includes our students’ lives, communities, play, funding, and yes, the eradication of systems of oppression, and laughter. You know, I think I want to be an herb. Found in nature, praised by the weirdos who know what’s up. Hated by the institutions because I’m hard to sell. Treatment with me takes too long, mostly because I’m not poison. Poison is efficient. I want to teach the way herbs heal. Drink this. Yes, it tastes funny. No, you don’t know what it is doing. But it is helping you be more of who you were meant to be. It’s not conventional, but learning isn’t either. What about you? If your teaching were medicine, what would it be?

Our plan was simple and highly anticipated—meet my friend Helen at choir rehearsal, then go for an evening treat of ice cream sundaes. I arrived at the church a little early. Rehearsal was underway. Through the small window in the sanctuary door, I could see the choir gathered in the chancel, each member holding an open black folder with sheet music, and all eyes focused on the director. I eased the heavy wooden door open, careful not to let it groan, walked halfway down the aisle, and slid quietly into a pew.Helen stood on the third step with the altos. Our eyes met. She smiled, a knowing, conspiratorial smile. I smiled back. I was certain we were both already thinking about hot fudge and vanilla beans. Helen had sung in this choir for more than ten years. She loved it. The choir was part of her spiritual rhythm, as familiar as prayer.As I waited, the choir director led them through two pieces: one hymn, one gospel song. The choir was faithful and earnest. Their sound was fine. Solid. Dependable. And… just… okay.Near the end of rehearsal, the director called the organist, Randall, forward. Randall had been hired about nine months earlier, and—somewhat reluctantly—the director allowed him to direct the choir from time to time.Randall stood, slid off the organ bench, and moved quickly to the front. One of the singers took her place at the piano. The choir closed their black binders and focused on the new conductor. Randall said nothing. He simply looked at the choir, lifted his arms and waited, gently. The pause itself felt like an invitation. Then he nodded to the pianist, who began playing in the tempo Randall shaped with his hands and arms.After a few measures, Randall brought the choir in.Their sound stopped me cold. I was stunned. The music was not louder. It was clearer. Fuller. Alive. Holy. As Randall conducted, he confidently called out instructions—round the tone here, lift the final consonant there. Each instruction was met with trust. The choir adjusted, leaned in, sang intensely. They sang a verse. Randall stopped them, offered a few more words, and started again from the top.In less than ten minutes, they had rehearsed the entire piece, solos and all. The choir sounded polished, consistent. I sat bewildered.How could the same group of people sound merely adequate under one director and extraordinary under another?When rehearsal ended, Helen gathered her things and hurried down the aisle. We greeted each other and headed for the ice cream shop. She ordered a banana split; I chose a root beer float. We sat outside on a picnic bench, spoons in hand, evening air wrapped around us, glad we had this moment together.Once we were settled, I told her what I had witnessed. I named the contrast. “When your director leads, the choir sounds just okay. But when Randall leads, you sound incredible!”Helen nodded. “We know,” she said gently. “All of us know.” I asked if the choir was undermining the director. She shook her head. “No. We love him. We do exactly what he asks.” Then she paused, took a breath to let the truth land softly. “Randall is just a better musician. He hears more. He knows more. He’s led more. He brings out what’s already in us.” She took another bite of her ice cream. “Randall doesn’t make us better people,” she said. “He just helps us sing who we already are. That’s why we sound better.”Helen already knew, and I had witnessed, that sometimes the very best leadership is about wisdom, listening, and the quiet ability to call forth the best in others.When we consider the roles and responsibilities of educational leaders and administrators, we recognize that the same is true. My hunch is that the primary job of administrators is to call the best out of teachers and staff people by helping them develop their better selves. The highly complex industry of education would have us believe that an administrator’s job is upholding the bureaucracy. Yet we know that the educational enterprise, at its core, is profoundly a human centered endeavor. Perhaps we have paid too much attention to maintaining the institutional mechanisms of teaching without realizing that leaders of educational communities must model healthy relationships as the most important factor of their responsibility. Presidents and Deans, do not miss opportunities to call forth the best in others. This might be your key responsibility and contribution. Reflect …Where in your leadership are you managing systems and policies efficiently, but missing opportunities to listen deeply enough to call forth the fuller gifts already present in your faculty, staff, and students?Who within your institution is “singing just okay” under your leadership—not because they lack talent or commitment, but because your leadership has not yet created the trust, clarity, or inspiration that invites their best?How often do you seek honest feedback about the impact of your leadership—and are you prepared to hear, without defensiveness, what your community already knows?In what ways are you cultivating your own growth, your listening, your wisdom, your relational capacity—so that your leadership expands what others are capable of becoming?If your primary responsibility is not simply to maintain the institution but to call people into their better selves, what would you need to do differently this semester, this year, or starting tomorrow? Make a list. Make a plan. 

I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog series that all the most important things I learned about teaching I learned while working as a wilderness guide at a children’s camp in the Adirondack Mountains during seminary and grad school. This is one of the reasons teaching outside makes so much sense to me. It’s why I expend so much effort trying to create immersive outdoor classes. It’s the form of teaching I know best: teaching as guiding.We all have images of ourselves as teachers. I’ve heard colleagues talk about teaching as midwifery, coaching, even zookeeping (a middle school teacher friend). Guiding is a common image, of course, but my personal guiding experience influences how I think of my work: be infinitely flexible, handle challenging questions, inspire students to greater curiosity, provide boundaries for safety both physical and metaphorical, read a group, shape group dynamics, facilitate conversation, empower students to learn for themselves, love even the unlikeable students, and, perhaps most important of all, when it rains, let it, then go out and remember your baptism.This is what teaching outside has done for me. It has not just provided space for a good class session but shaped the very way I imagine myself as a teacher. Teaching outside is wilder, less tamed, less regimented and institutionally rule-bound than teaching in the classroom, at least to me. I hope to be a wilder, less predictable teacher. Not in the way that makes students anxious because they can’t figure out what’s being expected of them at any given moment or because they’ve never been given a syllabus (I have very detailed syllabi and provide much structure to curb anxiety), but in a “you can’t shock me” way. Just last week, on the second day of the semester, when I asked an undergraduate gen ed class “What do you think the Bible is?” a student looked at me a little sideways, testing, and said, “A book of ancient ideologies created to support the patriarchy.” I smiled wide and said, “Yes! Let’s talk about that!” And though the rest of the class wasn’t quite sure what to do or whether I was Christian enough to be teaching a Bible class, this one firecracker of a student found her place in a real conversation – encouraged and challenged both – because I received her in a way she wasn’t expecting. Then she really got to learn.Playfulness and saying yes as often as I can is part of my identity as outdoor-teacher-guide too. When students ask, “Can we have class outside?” thinking that they will be told no because their other teachers say no, I say, “Yes!” When a student asks if they can make a video for the in-class project instead of drawing on the board, I say, “I can’t wait to see it!” Students sometimes ask for things they feel are breaking the rules, or try to get away with something, but when I can say yes, they find they have some agency and can participate in their own learning. In fact, though I don’t often point it out to them lest it make them less willing, their participation makes them learn better and more deeply.Guiding and teaching outdoors has also made me curious. I once marveled at a pool of mud on a mountaintop in the pouring rain with a friend when we discovered that the mud shimmered and became different shades of yellow depending on where we stood. I hope my students develop that kind of curiosity – and find that kind of friend – for themselves. My posture of wonder and curiosity in the classroom ought to demonstrate for them: “Why do you think that?” “What kind of bug is that?” “Tell me more about your perspective.” “How could we solve this?” “What else could that mean?” Many of my former campers are now grown up. Not only have they served as wilderness guides themselves, but they have gone on to get “real” jobs. A few still write letters, and I love to hear from them. I love hearing how they are becoming fully themselves and leaders in their communities: wild, playful, curious people who get to form others. It’s a delight to learn that I am no longer needed. It is a deeper delight still that they allow me to glimpse their triumphs. They still sign their letters, “Your camper, Tim.” I still sign my letters, “Always your guide, Aunt Samantha.” Tim has suggested that I cover the name plate on my office door with a sign that reads, “Dr. Aunt Samantha.” Perhaps I should take this under consideration. It is who I most am. What environments have shaped your image of yourself as a teacher? What outside-the-classroom work has given you aspects of yourself that transfer into your posture as a teacher? What should your office door read?