Humility

November 8, 2010
Written by
Jim Knight

Humility

June 6, 2023
November 8, 2010
Written by
Jim Knight
[People] who lack humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be their partners in naming the world … Dialogue cannot exist without humility.  Paulo Freire

What does it mean to teach with humility? I think more than anything it means to ensure that we approach our students knowing that teaching begins with them, not with us. Thus, humble teachers start by trying to understand their students. The classroom, as I’ve written previously, can tempt us to power trip. It feels good to be in control, and it feels good to win. If teachers aren’t careful, they can take advantage of their experience, education, and superior communication skills and overpower children.  

An articulate, educated teacher, can defeat a child during a classroom discussion in the same way an adult basketball coach can defeat a child during a basketball practice. And just as a too-enthusiastic, overpowering coach can deflate the enthusiasm of children playing sports, so too a too-enthusiastic, overpowering teacher can deflate the enthusiasm of children learning.

When we approach students with humility, we resist this temptation. Furthermore, we look to our students with a genuine desire to learn from them. How great it must feel for children to know that they taught their teacher something. We love to teach, love to share ideas, whether we are in kindergarten or graduate school.

Teachers do a lot to engender students’ enthusiasm just by being humble enough to learn from them.

Humility, too, means that we ask questions, good questions, real questions, that we don’t know the answer to, and then we listen for our students’ answers. When we approach teaching with humility, we see the classroom as a place designed to empower students to find their voice, not a place where our voice reins supreme. Eric Liu, has written a wonderful book about people who mentor us, the Guiding Lights of our lives. In the book he offers a beautiful summary of the importance of humility in teachers:

We have this notion of the great teacher as the Great Communicator. But the most powerful teachers aren’t those who speak, perform, and orate with the most dazzle and force. They are those who listen with full-body intensity, and customize. Teaching is not one-size-fits-all; it’s one-size-fits-one. So before we transmit a single thing, we must tune in to the unique and ever-fluctuating frequency of every learner: his particular mix of temperament, skills, intelligence, and motivation. This means, as teachers, putting aside our own egos and preconceptions about what makes this particular lesson so important . . . It means letting go of the idea of control.

To silence our self-interests so that children can learn sounds easy in theory, but it is not so easy in practice. And yet humility is essential.

If we want our children to learn, we must, in turn, enter the classroom as learners too. Ultimately, of course, that is best for for our students.  And for us.

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