I did my student teaching under the careful oversight of one of the most talented teachers I have ever known. She also had an enormous variety of coats. But it was her talent and energy that stood out the most. She was enormously energetic. Enormously.
I liked student teaching well enough, but most of the time I felt somewhat inadequate. It wasn’t that I was comparing myself to my mentor; I didn’t hope to be exactly like her. No, I was just generally somewhat worn out by the process, by the prep work and the study and the having to be “on” to teach every class.
That sounds familiar.
I remember one day commenting to my mentor that I thought maybe I didn’t want to be a teacher. No, I said to her, I think I want to be a writer. And a mom. Yes, that’s what I want.
She was very gracious. She listened to me. I think she understood. And it wasn’t until the next day, after she had thought about what her little student teacher had said, that she offered me another way to look at it: “You’re an enabler,” she said.
Nowadays I guess we think of the term “enabler” as someone in a kind of co-dependent relationship, and nobody thinks that’s good. But enabling is actually a good way to think of teaching, I think. As teachers, we’re looking to help our students find what they’re good at, and to develop those talents, and to learn to do what they aren’t good at, and to maybe even get good at those.
I think there really can be nothing co-dependent about a teacher-student relationship. Our job as teachers– similar to that of parents– is to get them to the point where they don’t need us anymore. Knowing that means we can’t hold on to them too tightly. We can’t care, ultimately, if they like us, or our classes, or whatever it is we’re wearing. We are there for them; they are not supposed to be there for us. Because eventually, if all goes well, they will Go Away.
***
I was never an athlete, a fact I regret only a little bit because I can’t know what I’m missing. But I’ve learned a bit about team-playing from being part of an orchestra, and also from time in theater. There’s nothing like the sense of unity that comes of putting together a great production.
One of the greatest joys I’ve had in teaching these recent years has been serving as a director of drama productions large and small. Don’t misunderstand me: I’ve only directed four shows, but two of them were large-ish, one of them a bit medium. And last night, I directed something small: five actors, five one-act plays, and this out of one-hour class sessions that met four days a week.
I was talking with a coach-friend about this the other day. How similar, I wondered, is directing a show to coaching a team? And he said something I thought was observant: when you coach a team, your team has lots of chances to put into practice what you’ve taught them. When you’re directing a show, they only have a handful of chances and, depending on the change in audience, maybe only One.
And I thought about it some more. When you’re coaching, you call your team in from time to time. You take time-outs, you have a half-time, you get chances to talk things over with your team. You can re-direct them, encourage them, even yell at them from the sidelines if you want to.
Such is not the case with theater.
Oh yes, you get your intermission, those precious minutes in a backroom or offstage somewhere when for a few minutes you can laugh about a misstep or comment on the tepid audience. But for the most part, when the curtain parts or the lights go down, they’re on their own. Those students of yours whom you’ve coached and encouraged, with whom you’ve interpreted and reinterpreted lines– they’re off and running now. And the Absolute Worst Thing you can do is to interrupt them. You cannot breathe a word.
***
So for the past two nights I’ve watched my team. I’ve sat in the front row, script in hand– a security blanket for them, or me, or all of us. But the joy of it was how they didn’t need me at all. I could have waited in the hallway for all they had need of me. I could have sat in the parking lot, or outside under the windows to hear the laughter that came (appropriately) again and again and again from an audience thoroughly entertained.
They did beautifully, those actors. They changed sets, changed costumes, went from play to play and from charcter to character. They waited out the laughter that, in rehearsal, we could only guess at or hope for. And for the audience they became their parts. They were convincing, funny, moving. Wonderful. They did what I asked them to do: Give your audience a great time. That’s a gift of theater, and last night, my students came through.
I am So Proud of– and So Happy for– Them.
After a similar production– a year or two ago?– a colleague after a performance referred to the evening and the show as “mine.” But that, I think, is Not At All what we’re after. Like I said, they didn’t need me.
The show that night, and the shows the other nights, and these last two evenings, too– they weren’t my night at all. They were theirs.
