If my hands are covered with a coat of chalk that is quickly becoming permanent, and if I now know what a human face looks like when it is trying mightily to stay awake but fails, and if leading questions come to mind more readily than plain statements, have I become a teacher?
The trouble is, I'm not sure I'm actually teaching anything.
Chalk is made up of millions of billion-year-old proto-exoskeletons of single-celled organisms. These spectacular little things worked so hard to provide themselves with definitive shape and protection better than a lipid-based cell membrane, and succeeded, and succeeded by the millions, and lived out their lives and died, and were compounded by immense pressures from the waters and now I have chalk in my classroom.
Sometimes I wonder whether teaching adults with college degrees the difference between odd and even integers* is worthy of the chalk. Other times I berate myself for being a math-snob. I'm not sure which side dominates or will prevail, but I do know that I never had this inner debate when I was teaching young people things like team-building and volunteerism or topics pertaining to health and their environment.
* The difference between odd and even integers is always odd.
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