Thank you very much for this insightful post. I have not been taught been in different cultural contexts besides my current experience in the USA; however, I came to appreciate the value of honest feedback and creative thinking skills in different educational experiences. This experience actually motivated me to become a teacher and set a model for the teacher I want to become.

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I love your metaphor of comparing how our intellectual processes to cooking by ourselves at home. That is a unique and reasonable metaphor attracts foodie like me. I agree that “Cooking is both an art and a responsibility for a chef, like teaching is to a teacher.” We would like to engrave our students into something unique and artistic, we would like to gain more knowledge like different recipes, then create our own based on those in our kitchen (classroom) and share them with our students. That was some of my thinking of extending your metaphor. Great job for coming up with such a cool metaphor! Thank you for sharing!
P.S. I love pictures you chose for this blog. Artistic looking.

Thank you for sharing this experience. As a person who is still trying to find her teaching voice, I believe we do need to break the ice for making more space for creativity. I really liked the visual you used in your blog. We need to be more mindful about the barriers we intentionally/unintentionally place in our teaching process.

“In what some may regard unusual – inappropriate even – this is one of the things that I am most proud of, and what my students say they appreciate about me: that I, too, have weaknesses, and I do not know everything.”

YES. I never understand those people who are immovable, stubborn creatures who can’t relate to students or admit they don’t have all the answers. (No one does; not even Google.) That said, I do have teachers who have inspired me to NOT teach in certain ways. (Comments I never plan to give my students: “Can you *even* write a paper? Been there. Won’t bad pedagogy that!)

If your teaching style is anything like you are in class, I bet your students really like you. You seem approachable and willing to have fun. Sometimes I think that’s the most important part.

I’m the one with the Deathly Hallows tattoo on my left wrist. (Kinda hoping I’m not the one you mean because that means I have another fellow tattooed HP fan!)

For what it’s worth, I was 21 when DH came out; it’s crazy to me how many of us remember that (and how specific it is).

I agree that there’s a fine line when you’re interacting with students. Attempting to be approachable while maintaining credibility is definitely one of the hardest parts of teaching. I usually try to limit the context to things I can do (math) but have to work harder for (math) than the things I love (writing) without giving the impression they won’t have to learn anything in my class.

P.S. I don’t know. But there will never be enough.

I enjoyed reading your stories. And I believe it is important to think about how would us introduce ourselves to our students, that is like the first step of how we would like to form the relationship with the students. You bring out such a nice topic. And the second thing I like about your blog is you insert your name card. That is a cool idea. The name card is a more solid way to give out a self-definition in front of others. I get inspired by your idea, I think I would like to take some time to design a name card for my future class. Thank you for sharing and inspiration.

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