I was pleased to read Luke's thoughts today on the function of teacher. Like him, I struggle daily with the misaligned institutional expectations around 'school' with my own preference for 'learning.' He and I have been engaged in a discussion about this for at least the past six years, and he never fails to bring new ideas.
Tonight I'm too tired (from teaching, no less) to do more than quote him; however, I'm not sure I could add much to improve this:
Teaching that is primarily the imposition of a set curriculum by a supposed expert, whether driven by a government, a corporation, a school board, a university, or an individual teacher, can only ever result in schooling, never in learning. Conversely, teaching that abandons altogether the function of the teacher, removing the experience, knowledge, learning network, and model of the teacher, will never encourage learning at all. As a teacher, I must always be between these two poles, not teaching a subject or a curriculum, but teaching myself as a model of learning, a model that is valuable precisley because it is mine and irreplaceable, even if it must always recognize its faultiness, and frailties, and its limitations.