Following Your Own Tao

FOLLOWING YOUR OWN “TAO” TO THE TEACHING PROFESSION

by Dr. Trace Pirtle

I am a passionate counselor educator.  All of my graduate students are currently teachers who have decided to leave their blissful classrooms and follow a new path to the school counseling profession.  For every prospective teacher, and would be graduate counseling graduate student, my initial question is always the same, “Are you following your own “Tao” or Way, to the helping profession?  Allow me to tell you a story…the story of San Francisco Bob.

In 1970 I was a freshman in High School (yes I am that old) and would travel to San Francisco with a couple friends.  We would enjoy visiting with a street musician who always had the same underlying words of wisdom for his young observers.  His message was “follow your own Tao (Way).”

San Francisco Bob presented himself as a common bum: a worn out old Hippy from the 1960’s.  His hair was scraggly under a World War I flying ace skullcap with goggles pulled down over his eyes.  His beard was long and gray and his old military jacket was tattered.  He played chords on a beat-up acoustic guitar, blew a kazoo, and tapped the beat with a tambourine that was fixed to one of his shoes.  Pretty cool dude…and talented too!  At his feet was an open black box with red felt on the inside where a few dollar bills and loose change gathered from appreciative listeners.  From my recollections we never gave him a cent but he was always ready to pass along his message to us...truly the mark of a natural-born teacher even if he didn’t have a formal classroom.   

San Francisco Bob offered his words of wisdom as a reflection of his own life.  As a young child in school he excelled in math and science.  Naturally, he was encouraged by his parents and teachers to follow his mathematical giftedness to a career in the “hard” sciences.  He would frequently tell them, “I’m good in math and science, but I don’t like it!”  He would quietly mutter under his breath, “I want to play music” but the response was always the same from his parents and teachers, “you’ll never make a living as a musician…don’t waste your time and energy.”  All along the academic path, from elementary school to graduate school, he quietly studied his lessons knowing that his real passion was in music. 
Our friend graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. Degree in Chemistry.  He became a successful chemist with Dow Chemical Corporation.  He also became unhappy and clinically depressed.  He told us of one morning in which he awoke to another “miserable day.”  The sun was shinning, the birds were chirping, his fancy car was waiting to take him to another miserable day at the chemical plant.  He recalled looking to the nightstand beside his bed.  A loaded pistol was inside the top drawer.  He lifted the pistol to his head, cocked the hammer, and decided that he would either pull the trigger or he would leave his job.  Either way, he would leave his life as a chemist.

Fortunately, San Francisco Bob elected to put the pistol back in the drawer, resign from his job, and sought personal and professional bliss on the streets of San Francisco as a musician.  His standard of living must have suffered greatly, but his overall sense of wellness and quality of life clearly improved.
What does this have to do with you?  Everything!  Natural teachers are found in a variety of environments.  Some are in front of formal classrooms and some are teaching on the streets of San Francisco.  The important point is that natural teachers have the best interest of their students in mind and they are sharing something they love because it is in their heart, not merely because someone told them they should be doing it.  Are you following your own Tao as you prepare for your own classroom?  Do you have the passion and the fire in your heart to make a difference in the life of a child?  Your actions in the classroom DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE!  Think about the story of San Francisco Bob as you look around your classroom tomorrow.  Will you help your students follow their own Way as you follow your own?  Remember…
“Great teachers (and great counselors) are born, not made…
but they can be made better by great training
and that is what my job is all about!”
A Trusted Mentor…George Kroetch