The Relational Waters

I used to think teaching meant knowing something well enough to explain it.

There is truth in that. A teacher should know something. There is craft in knowing how to break an idea apart, demonstrate a movement, find an image, construct a question, or give someone enough structure to begin.

But that is not the part of teaching that interests me most anymore.

Because I can know something alone.

Teaching begins when I place what I know between us.

And then it no longer belongs entirely to me.

And suddenly the thing I thought I knew has moved.

This is why I associate teaching with Water.

Water

Water does not meet the world without relationship.

Pour it into a glass and it takes the shape of the glass.

Send it down a mountain and it finds the openings in the land.

Put your hand into a river and the water moves around you — but you have entered its movement too.

Neither remains completely untouched by the encounter.

That is the kind of teaching I believe in.

Not: I know. You receive.

But:

I have something I have come to know.
Let me place it here between us
and see what happens when you encounter it.

This does not mean knowledge has no structure.

Water is not nothing.

It has properties. It has force. It carries. It erodes. It freezes. It evaporates. It nourishes. It overwhelms.

Relationship does not mean that everything becomes whatever we want it to mean.

It means that what I know must eventually encounter something that is not me.

And if I am actually in relationship, that encounter must be capable of affecting me.

What I Know Changes When I Teach It

I have experienced this over and over again.

I think I understand something.

Then I try to teach it.

And someone asks a question.

Sometimes it is an adult. Sometimes it is a child. Sometimes it is someone whose body simply cannot do what I assumed a body would do.

Sometimes someone misunderstands me in a way that reveals that my language was never as clear as I thought it was.

Sometimes they understand perfectly and disagree.

Sometimes they take what I have given them somewhere I never intended to go.

That moment matters.

Because I have a choice.

I can protect my knowledge from the encounter.

Or I can become curious about what the encounter is showing me.

Teaching is one of the ways reality answers my ideas.

That may be why I have always needed it.

I can write a beautiful theory alone. I can construct a framework. I can follow an idea through psychology, mythology, language, symbolism, history, and philosophy.

But then I have to bring it to someone.

And the waters begin moving.

Here and Now

Teaching happens here.

With this person. In this body. On this day.

That sounds obvious until I notice how often systems are built around abstractions.

We construct an idea of what a person in that category needs and then become confused when the living human in front of us does not behave according to the representation.

Water brings me back.

Who is here?

Relationship requires that the answer remain unfinished
until the other person arrives.

Teaching Ballet Taught Me This

I can teach someone the mechanics of a développé.

I can explain placement. I can demonstrate the pathway. I can talk about turnout, alignment, weight, opposition, breath.

And none of that guarantees that the movement will become available in another person’s body.

So I watch.

And suddenly:

there it is.

That moment is difficult to describe because neither of us made it alone.

I brought knowledge.

They brought a body I had never inhabited.

And through attention, language, movement, failure, adjustment, and relationship, we found a way for the knowledge to become theirs.

But something else happened.

I learned too.

Now I understand the movement differently because I had to encounter it through them.

They did not merely receive my knowledge.

They changed my relationship to what I knew.

That is teaching.

Knowledge Has to Cross Water

There is a difference between knowing something and being able to carry it across the space between people.

That crossing interests me.

Because knowledge cannot simply be picked up intact from one mind and placed into another.

Something has to happen in between.

Language has to be chosen. Examples have to be found. Attention has to be given. The other person has to interpret.

Meaning moves through all of it.

This is why I don’t think teaching is simply transmission.

Teaching is translation through relationship.

And translation always reveals something.

Sometimes I discover that I understood the thing but had never found language for it. Sometimes I discover that I only thought I understood it. Sometimes the learner gives me the language I was missing. Sometimes the question changes completely.

Water carries knowledge.

But it also reshapes it.

The Teacher Must Be Reachable

There is an ethical question here too.

If I enter a relationship believing that only the other person is supposed to change, I am not sure I am fully in relationship.

I may be instructing. I may be managing. I may be transmitting information.

Sometimes those things are necessary.

But relationship asks something more difficult.

Can you reach me too?

This does not require me to abandon what I know every time someone disagrees with me.

Being teachable is not the same as being without orientation.

Water needs banks or it becomes a flood.

But the banks cannot be so rigid that nothing moves.

I want enough structure to carry what I know.

And enough openness to discover what I don’t.

Relationship Is Where Meaning Gets Tested

This is why Water follows Air in the symbolic map I use.

Air names. Air distinguishes. Air builds language, theories, categories, stories, symbols, explanations.

I love Air.

Much of my work happens there.

I can spend hours following a word.

But eventually the word has to meet something.

I can say child. Then I meet one.

I can say love. Then someone I love needs something from me.

I can develop a theory of development. Then I teach.

I can interpret a symbol. Then someone else tells me what they see.

I can believe I understand another person.

Then they say:

No. That isn’t what I meant.

And suddenly I am in Water.

This is where meaning becomes relational.

The question is no longer simply: Does my interpretation make sense?

It becomes:

Can it remain alive in contact with what is not me?

Allowing the Waters to Reshape Me

I think this is one of the reasons I continue teaching.

It prevents my knowledge from becoming sealed.

Every person introduces variation. Every classroom changes the lesson. Every conversation reveals another position from which the world can be encountered. Every relationship places pressure against the edges of what I thought I knew.

And sometimes another person shows me an opening I could not have found alone.

I want that.

I don’t want to become so certain of my own map that the territory can no longer surprise me.

I want the relational waters to reach me.

Because if nothing I encounter is capable of changing me, I am no longer participating in relationship.

I am standing on the shore explaining the river.

What I Share

So when I teach now, I think I am doing something slightly different from giving someone what I know.

I am saying:

This is what I can see from where I am standing.

Come look with me.

Then you arrive carrying your own perception, history, body, intelligence, questions, and ways of knowing.

And something exists between us that did not exist before.

Perhaps I give you language. Perhaps you give me a contradiction. Perhaps I teach you a movement. Perhaps your movement teaches me something about the form. Perhaps nothing I offer belongs to you. Perhaps one sentence follows you home.

I cannot entirely determine that.

Teaching is an offering into relationship,
not control over what the relationship produces.

Water Returns What We Give It Changed

This is what I love about teaching.

Knowledge leaves me. It crosses the space between us. It meets another life.

And if the relationship is alive, something comes back.

I receive it.

And now what I carry is not exactly what I carried before.

Neither are you.

That is why I place teaching in Water.

Because Water reminds me that sharing what I know is not the final stage of knowing.

It is another encounter. Another current. Another chance for reality to answer.

I teach because I have something to share.
I remain in relationship because I still have something to learn.