Teachers and questions that hold answers within them
As a teacher and mentor, I constantly have to stop myself from offering solutions to my students. Of course, they will ask questions and express doubts. When they feel safe, they reveal their hurts and weaknesses. They expect answers from me.
My problem is not that I don’t have answers, but that I have too many of them. It’s a struggle to keep them to myself. I have learnt to smile and nod. Look away and stay quiet.
The answers we seek are usually embedded in the questions. The answers that stay with us are the ones that we find ourselves. When we create space for questions to stay with us, answers click in place exactly when it is time for them to do so.
A younger me had often believed that everything I know, I learnt it myself. I now know that this is largely because I had some very good teachers. They allowed us large swathes of time and space to explore ideas. They honoured what we brought into the learning space even when we saw no value in it.
The older me knows that learning happens only when we feel safe. Lessons stay with us when they are accompanied with joy and happiness.
A teacher’s role is to create safe spaces. To validate questions. They are important to express. To not dismiss or judge as ignorance. The best teachers are self-aware. They admit that the same questions nag them too. They remind themselves of how they arrived at answers and solutions in their life and silently guide their students towards a similar journey.
As a teacher, I have learnt not to be hooked to immediate gratification. I can offer wise replies that students will be impressed with and make me seem like a person doing her job well. Instead, I try to be economical with my words. I remind myself of my own teachers, some of whom spoke in riddles, others who did not respond to me.
“You don’t come here to get sympathy,” my teacher had once said to our group. “You come here to learn how to solve your problems by yourself.”
Now, I can see that instead of offering readymade answers to us, he facilitated an environment where we developed a space within ourselves to design our own learning. We felt free to pay attention to our interests and needs without the pressures of what we-should-do and what we-must-do. He was patient in letting us discover the route towards choices and the costs and consequences of each.
Taking things slowly is often the fastest route to the destination we need to reach. There is always wonder in the obscure. Staying curious helps it to reveal itself.
Now, I guide myself to stay comfortable even when my student is in visible discomfort. It is part of their learning to accept that things take time. Sometimes, these difficult, discomforting moments can last for a long time. The need to offer a fix or change the way the other is feeling is tempting. It may offer immediate relief. But it becomes an obstacle in the journey of learning to rely on one’s inner resources and be confident that the answers are within us. That is true empowerment.
Mistakes expand our imagination. Learning to let go of the pressure to be perfect and befriend our mistakes eventually teaches us to confront shame and fear and go beyond them.We must make mistakes, more and more of them. They teach us to do things innovatively.
We can’t always show up when we are expected to. We need to get comfortable with disappointing others. It often means we are showing up for ourselves — a need that we have been socialised to not value.
There will always be unexpected changes and occurrences that will take us by surprise. Instead of trying to control variables, we develop the resilience to tide over exigencies. Teachers can only show us how. Abilities shift within us only when we allow them to.
I also learn that answers change over time. Horizons widen constantly. We understand the same things differently. It doesn’t make our previous understanding or behaviour wrong. We need to be capacious — to accept multiple possibilities and impossibilities at the same time.
— The writer is a filmmaker, author and teacher
