WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY, THE TEACHER APPEARS

Maybe I've just always misunderstood it ...

I always understood it as: When I am ready, the teacher comes. Shows up. Picks me up. Or at least: Lets me find him/her.

Nice, isn't it? There's something a bit mystical, even magical about that, and above all it makes me worthy, perhaps even chosen. And our encounter becomes something like destiny or fate or some other form of cosmic event which I am a part of. Beautiful. Even if I'm not as aware of it all. Or precisely because of it. It actually gives me a feeling of coherence, of belonging. When it comes.

Well, it wasn't until the pandemic year, when I went back to work as a regular (albeit substitute) primary school teacher, that I realized what this bon mot or belief actually means. I kept coming across pupils who have been going to school for years but obviously haven't yet understood what school is or what a teacher is. Accordingly, these pupils are always somehow in the wrong movie, and therefore I, as a teacher, am part of this misunderstood setting.

And that's how I began to understand the apparent mystique: When the student is ready to be a student, he literally comes to his or hers senses and recognizes the helping teacher who has been standing with him/her for the longest time and has been a troublesome, strange figure until this very moment.

A strange figure. In the context of courses with adults, perhaps also an ideologized, idealized figure, an achiever, a guru – a screen for projection of some kind, the list would be long. Often in contrast to the students, who perceive the teacher as a disruptive factor, the teacher is the real attraction for adults. And so I can think of a number of situations where course participants who came because of me instead of integral movement. A projection is rigid, there is no movement in it. No space for the movement to unfold, just a surface. If you then work on deconstructing the projection, the idealized becomes a strange, often tedious figure. Bye-bye. In contrast to the students, the course participants can do this: bye-bye. Off to the next projection figure.

Deconstructing the projection means that the teacher is seen as a human being. The potential in this is that the students can then also see themselves as people and let go of the project of self-optimization with a fixed goal and start to move and live.

Of course, the teacher is part of a setting, both for the students and for the course participants. In both cases, the teaching is a very small part and the actual practice is the main part. The essential aspect of success is not so much external motivation, but intrinsic motivation. This turns the teacher into a teacher. Before this intrinsic motivation awakens, from the outside he is an entertainer – an enjoyable or a tedious one. (From the teacher's perspective, he is one who tries in ten thousand ways to awaken this intrinsic motivation).

And it goes further than that, at least at the student age: when the student is ready, the teacher disappears. At some point, it's time to stop being a student. An offensive statement in our age of the ideal of perpetual education and lifelong learning. I didn't say it was time to stop learning. But there comes a point when you learn without a teacher because you have learned to learn. Fostering this ability is the primary task of a teacher, especially in our times of rapid change. The dialog continues, but the roles fall away (and the infinite game begins). Of course, there are different levels of experience – that doesn't fall away either. And neither does the respectful interaction with one another.
When the student is ready, the teacher disappears. This is also a statement that can be double-edged. After all, who decides who is ready? As a young person, you create your environment, your system, your practice, your temple. There is a danger here of settling in too quickly and closing yourself off, but this does not manifest itself as closing yourself off, but as certainty. You have a point of view. You have worked hard for a few years to achieve something and are not prepared to bring this into a completely open process and question it. In my experience, this open willingness tends to be a quality that grows with age. It is perceived by the younger generation not as a strength, but as a weakness. On the other hand, it is important to accept the unbiased and undistorted attitude that the younger generation can bring to the table while they still have it, and to include it in the discussions and dialog.

In this way, the student may suddenly appear to be the teacher. That would then be a sign that we are playing an infinite game.