Teach

Those who can’t, or won't?

On a flying visit to London yesterday, for a thing I will talk about at some point, I overheard an American woman tell two friends, presumably fellow Americans who came to visit her in the Big Smoke, that the tube is mainly underground and only goes overground outside the boundaries of Zone 6. A barefaced lie.

Reader, I was vexed. Not only was this woman spreading fake news to these trusting, wide-eyed tourists, but she was doing so with confidence. I, a Good Immigrant, thought about interjecting to correct her but, knowing it might make me seem like a pompous bellend, decided to keep quiet. Now I must live with the guilt of knowing that those poor Americans will only cement their reputation of being ignorant, as they proudly tell other Americans around a campfire that the tube definitely doesn’t go overground in Kensington.

The incident made me think of influencers who share tips on how to write perfect, bestselling novels, even though they’ve never published a novel, let alone seen it hit the charts. This, in turn, led me down a spiral of self-loathing and flagellation, which probably would’ve happened anyway on the 4-minute tube journey between Victoria and Embankment (which is all underground, by the way).

Why am I so reticent to claim that I know things? I asked myself. Aloud, because nobody cares in London.

At university, I was making films as if I could count Truffaut and Antonioni as peers. When my classmates were unable to lift themselves from a K-hole on the floor, I could step in to finish directing the group project. After uni, I felt ready to personally helm all the Sundance entrants there would ever be.

Then, things started to change. I went from being an unpaid art department assistant to being an exploited media intern on a boat on the Thames, to shovelling literal mud as a theatre production intern underground (Waterloo — the underground bit), and I gradually began to feel my knowledge and certainty slipping away from me. Over the years, as I watched shows and books and stories I’d written fail to ‘go somewhere’, the only thing I could confidently declare was that I had nothing to offer anyone.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

What an awful saying. But every time I thought about packing in the creative endeavours, it came to me. My mum was a teacher, and I’d already experienced enough of what she went through to be put off the profession. I was confident I could never do it — what the hell could I possibly teach anyone?

So I did what I always do: I had an epiphany about a decade later. What was it that I loved about my favourite teachers? What did I learn from them, and how did I learn best? As I considered these questions, I realised that personal connection was key. It was their passion for their topics that made an impact on me. The best teachers imparted to me the things that were valuable to them. They were proto-influencers, I might say if I was being facetious.

During my time shovelling mud underground, the wonderful venue / production manager said to me: ‘You know more than you think you do.’ It’s a moment I often return to in my mind, when I need a little serotonin. Knowledge and expertise aren’t the same. I can know about weird bits of folklore and share them on social media sometimes, but I’m not an authority on the matter. I’m not a folklorist, I’m not an academic, but nor do I have to be in order to share my enthusiasm for something with others. That’s how I decided to think about teaching.

A few months ago, a friend from Cyprus, who now works as the Literature teacher in our former school, approached me with an intriguing offer: when I was next in the motherland, would I run a writing workshop for the kids? My instinct was to say no. What could I teach them? What do I have to offer? My writing has got me nowhere, I still work a 9-5, etc, etc. But then I thought how fun it would be to impart my enthusiasm for both folklore and writing to a bunch of young minds who may, for all I knew, respond well to it. So, I accepted.

To say it was surreal to be standing in a classroom in a school that was not quite my old school (new building, new location), talking to kids in uniforms that weren’t quite like the one I used to wear (cherry blazer instead of burgundy), is an understatement. I wasn’t confident about being a ‘teacher’ at all. But I reminded myself that I did have some knowledge. And what I lacked in that, I made up for with enthusiasm for my subject.

Those who can’t teach: do it anyway.