Finding Clarity in the Muddy Waters

Yesterday I had an epiphany: the power of metaphor lies not so much in the elaboration it provides but rather metaphorical thinking provides opportunity for me to articulate an understanding that I might not otherwise be able to articulate. Metaphor nominates a concept or insight. One of my teaching goals this semester has been to teach students to develop and use metaphors in their thinking and writing, so I've been scouring resources for different strategies to help me do that. Gabriele Lusser Rico's Writing the Natural Way has a chapter "Wedding Word to Image: Metaphor" on this idea that has been great food for thought.

Reflecting on my own cognitive processes, I realize that those occasions when I create a metaphor for a new insight, it solidifies my understanding and creates the vehicle I ride in to get to the truth. I was talking with a friend yesterday and explaining that there are those times when all the educational theories and ideas become, to use a cliche, crystal clear for me. Now, as I said to my friend, that clarity is not always long-lasting. But man, when the muddy waters from the storms die down and I can see the bottom, excitement runs high. My friend and I started talking about all the things in education that muddy the waters for teachers: top-down directives, competing different priorities, forgetting what teaching at its simplest really is, political agendas, money, power, and the list goes on. One of my colleagues, Buddy, made a statement a few weeks ago that I've continued to ponder. He said teaching is really a simple act. You need two things: a teacher and a student. There's a lot of truth in that. Why have we allowed education to get so complex and complicated when we know that in its purest form, learning is about an exchange, a simple dialogue, a transaction? While I might not be able to control the "storms" that muddy my thinking, I celebrate those times when the wind dies down, the sand settles and I look down to see the bottom clearly.