The Teacher You Think You Are Is Getting in the Way

In the last piece, we took a look at the fiction of the self—the shimmering, stitched-together sense of "me" that feels so real and permanent until we bother to examine it. Today, let’s walk that insight straight into the classroom.

Because it turns out that the teacher-self—the fixed image many of us carry of who we are supposed to be when we teach—can be just as fictional, just as heavy, and just as limiting.

Most teachers (and I’m raising my hand here too) start building a secret résumé of roles almost from day one: The Expert. The Authority. The Charismatic Leader. The Inspirational Adult Who Changes Lives Before Lunch.
These roles aren't bad. Many of them arise from good intentions and genuine care. But when we cling to them too tightly, they become prisons. They squeeze the air out of teaching. They make every student question, every off-script moment, every sign of failure feel like a personal threat.

The more tightly we cling to a fixed idea of ourselves, the harder it becomes to actually teach.

Zen Master Dōgen reminds us that practice and realization are not two. Enlightenment isn’t some prize we earn later—it's how we show up now. Teaching works much the same way. It's not a role we perfect and then perform flawlessly. It's a practice we live into moment by moment, messy and unfinished.

If we loosen our grip on being "The One Who Knows," something quietly luminous happens in the classroom too.
We become freer to listen.
Freer to be surprised.
Freer to teach not from our constructed identities, but through the simple activity of presence.

Suzuki Roshi once said, “When you are you, Zen is Zen.” Teaching, likewise, is most alive when the teacher is just... teaching. Not proving. Not performing. Just entering the living moment of exchange with students, where both are constantly being remade.

This isn’t to say expertise doesn't matter. Of course it does. (And we’ll geek out plenty about craft.) A gardener should know how to care for soil. A teacher should know her content, her craft. But when our expertise calcifies into a static identity—when we cannot admit not knowing, cannot laugh, cannot shift—then we’ve stopped practicing. We've become something like educational monuments: impressive maybe, but inert.

Real teaching happens in motion. Real teaching happens when you can hold your plans lightly and your students closely. When you can let a conversation veer into unexpected territory because it’s alive there. When you can notice that today, what your students most need is not your dazzling lesson on figurative language but your silent willingness to sit with them in their confusion.

When the grip on self loosens, attention sharpens.
When the need to be impressive falls away, intimacy with the moment deepens.
When the identity of "Teacher" fades just a little, the activity of teaching comes into full bloom.

This is no small shift. It’s not about getting better at your "performance." It’s not about finally nailing the timing of your discussion questions or delivering a lesson so polished it gleams under fluorescent lights. It’s about stepping offstage altogether—trusting that the real heart of teaching doesn’t happen from a spotlight, but in the luminous, unguarded back-and-forth of real relationship.

It’s about remembering that teaching isn't something you perform at students. It’s something you do with them. It’s less theater, more conversation. Less transmission, more encounter. The classroom stops being a stage where you impress an audience and becomes a space where living beings meet, change each other, and sometimes—if the conditions are right—build something that wasn’t there before.

Norman Fischer puts it simply:

““Real responsiveness is not about fixing or controlling. It’s about being willing to stay open in the middle of whatever is happening.” (2013, p. 97)”

That’s it. That’s the real deal. No secret handshake. No hidden tricks. No perfect pedagogical method or twelve-step programs to perfect your Teacher Persona.

Meeting what’s arising is the practice.

And meeting requires something risky: setting down the shield of self and letting yourself be affected. It’s easier said than done. Because carrying a polished self into the classroom feels safe. It feels like control. Like professionalism. But it’s a brittle kind of safety, and every veteran teacher eventually knows the feeling of that shell cracking under real life: a student's grief, a flash of wonder, a question that undoes your lesson plan before your second cup of coffee.

We’ll talk soon about what this looks like practically—because yes, you can still have a strong lesson plan and hold your teacher-self lightly. You can still run a tight ship without identifying yourself as Captain Forever. You can still teach with skill, ambition, and love—but from a place of freedom, not armor.

When we stop teaching from behind our carefully constructed selves, we start teaching with our whole being. And what meets the students then isn't a performance. It's a human being.
And that, weirdly enough, is what they needed all along.

For now, maybe just notice: When are you trying to "be a teacher," and when are you simply teaching?

One feels heavy.

The other feels like breathing.

See for yourself.

References

Dōgen. (2002). The treasury of the true dharma eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo (K. Tanahashi, Ed. & Trans.). Shambhala Publications.

Fischer, N. (2009). Training in compassion: Zen teachings on the practice of Lojong. Shambhala Publications.

Suzuki, S. (1970). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Weatherhill.