more thoughts on teaching

Yesterday after a meeting Cynthia and I went over to RUB BBQ for a late lunch where I found the fried green tomato batter to be reminiscent of the crusty deliciousness of McNuggets. I told her stories about teaching and she told me about the N+1 reading last night which she attended with a well-respected, non-best selling novelist. After a while I speculated aloud about teaching and its relationship to professions and fields such as writing, fine art, and architecture. Teaching being the end of what you do rather than a means is what a student needs rather than some guy, no matter how talented, who sees teaching as a way to remain financially viable to finish a book. Of course plenty of teachers just go through the motions of teaching as well, perhaps because we don't really think of something like education to be an art as well.

This morning while brushing my teeth I wondered if how often teachers admit their own mistakes to their students. Since I have such limited experience with teaching I notice these things every day and then try to make corrections. Some, or possibly most, of them are logistical, such as figuring out that I should have had students pick out a debate topic for class before the lunch break rather than after. I told the kids that after we reconvened for the afternoon, and they seemed to forgive my graft when I told them this. Do other teachers do this? I've noticed this a few times in graduate seminars, but I don't remember encountering this before.

I wonder how much we think that we have to present some sort of aura of greatness or infallability as teachers? I wonder if teachers think they need to do this even though I think students aren't going to necessarily respect that aura. So how many mistakes do we disclose to students?