22

Of course, you can never really know with any certainty what will come next.

That is where the delight comes. And the dread, and the terror. The anxiety. The fear. The wicked relishing of knowing that something will follow.

Should we try to kill it, or control it, or minimize it, or confine it, by what we know, by what we feel comfortable with, by what we think we can harness and domesticate?

Education is about taking risks and facing fears. Education is about opening one's self to transformation, opening one's self up in a field of uncertainty.

Maybe that is why we are so often, as educators, filled with anxiety! Maybe that is why we seek stability. Why we are so reticent to change. We want stability. We want some kind of permanence, immutablity, constancy. Teaching (and learning!) is incredibly hard, and if it is always ephemeral, if both the action AND the structure are ephemeral and changing, and the students are changing, then what and who are we? How do we dare do this? How do we risk this?