Tomorrow morning I leave with the choir for a performance at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Our choir has won the honor of giving the opening concert at the annual convention of the Midwest Music Educators Association. This is the fourth time in as many years that our director has brought us to one prestigious venue or another (Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Rothenburg International Choral Festival) through his stunning capacity to teach.

As a teacher, it is a rare privilege to watch a superb fellow teacher at work. It is also a rare privilege to be a student learning from that same fellow teacher at work. So many of my peers, once having reached teacher status, stop taking classes. They keep learning, but stop taking classes. There is no substitute for being in student status to inform our teaching. Taking classes makes me think about how to offer classes.

I also am taking private lessons in voice. My teacher for that endeavor is a retired fellow teacher who came out of retirement to work part time. He is also teaching me things about how to support students in one to one situations. This is another example of how instruction informs teaching; being instructed informs my tutorials.

Receiving the teaching of others helps me work on being a receptive teacher of my students. Perhaps if I taught subjects of a different nature this wouldn't matter so much, but teaching English is best done as a receptive process. Student readings and student writings are best encouraged by attentive teachers. Lead and receive.