Until recently, roughly the last two weeks, I have not been teaching my students. This is not to say that my students have been without instruction, but that their instructor has not been the person I think of when I think of myself. Largely this feels like a matter of what Skorczewski refers to as “the conflict between what a teacher should be and what we might call a ‘teaching self.’” But, if I can wax poetic in a blog post about authenticity, this also feels like possession—like the ghosts of authority would move in at the beginning of every class and the me that I know, the me that people outside of my classroom might recognize, would move out.
Admittedly this was my own doing. I invited “unconscious and terribly messy” conversation with the voices of instructors past, and my own voice, somehow, became lost in the reverberation. This was, I believe, partly because I wanted my students to view me as a professional, as someone they could respect, someone they could learn from, someone they would want to learn for. A totally reasonable expectation, I felt, not beyond the abilities of the supernatural. So I let the ghosts speak. I forewent, even, the first day ice breaker for fear of humanizing myself, and I became the faded essence of my ghosts of authority, no better than an echo.
Well, to carry on with this motif, I have emerged from the fog and exercised the demons. My students and I, that is to say my newly found teaching self, had a frank discussion about the university structure and our positions within it. Ironically, the act of materializing above the din of my instructional ghosts to present my authentic self to my students was also the act of becoming more transparent. Perhaps now my students see me as somewhat of a transliminal being—one who straddles the line between instructor and student, who hears the voices of ghosts and contributes to the discussion—but who is ultimately human.