When I think about teaching as an adventure, I cannot help but recall the year our high school wind ensemble set out to learn An American Elegy. You may know that this music was written by Frank Ticheli to remember the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado. Initially, we went through the typical rehearsal process of analyzing structure, harmony, and melody. Then we played through the song in small sections to identify technical issues and resolve them accordingly. Several weeks into the process, I realized the music had not yet come to life; it did not yet feel like it was telling a story. We began a conversation designed to facilitate my students’ internal exploration of the music, starting with event itself. How did it make you feel? Did it change how you see the world? What can we do to help each other process events such as the shootings at Columbine?

I asked the students to talk about the connections between their thinking and the music. What parts or sections connect with your personal feelings about the event? Where do you hear hope and courage? Where do you hear joy and sorrow? What techniques did the composer utilize to create the emotions and images you see when you hear the music? Almost immediately, the song began to reveal itself in new ways. Students had explored their emotions courageously and shared willingly, creating a new collective interpretation of the story behind the piece. Put simply, they had made it their own. I could not have predicted how the students might respond to such dialogue; I did not know how that learning strategy would work out. At the time, I knew only that it was important to create the space and encourage my students’ exploration.

What I learned in An American Elegy seems to be one of the distinguishing features of the teacher as adventurer. To be honest, none of us knows how our classes tomorrow are going to go, let alone how our whole career will turn out; simply too many factors affect these outcomes. We don’t know today which students will be absent tomorrow, whether some larger event will affect our whole school, or even if the lesson that worked so well last year will work as well this time around. Although we hope it does, we really don’t even know if our projector bulb will work all day tomorrow. Regarding our long-term prospects, budgets may change, our own health and other personal circumstances may change, and demographic factors we cannot control may drive student numbers at our school up or down. This reminds us to think in a theological framework and admit that the future rests in God’s hands (as much as we might love for it to remain within our own). But we still want control . . . and teaching as an adventure implies a lack of control.

Of course, in an important sense our teaching does remain in our control. We can predict the main contours of our teaching work and other responsibilities for next year with reasonable accuracy. We can go ahead and make the changes to our courses we thought of at several points in the last few months. We would be terribly irresponsible—tourist teachers in fact—if we decided that everything we did this year would work fine again next year. But knowing that ultimately we can’t control all the factors that give shape to our work, we might do well to adopt the mind-set of the adventurer. Just like travelers, adventurers set out with a plan. Perhaps like travelers they have a kind of “let’s see how this goes” approach to the realization of their plan. And in teaching, we try something and see if it works. We constantly assess our own work, recalibrating what needs to change before we teach this material again, and, of course, sometimes adjusting our theories about instruction or curriculum.

Adventurer teachers see limitless possibilities and opportunities as they gaze across their classrooms. Fundamental to their teaching is a deep belief that every student has the ability and desire to learn. The adventurer teacher fearlessly facilitates learning, using an authentic, open-ended, Christ-centered approach that values critical thinking, global citizenship, and practical application of knowledge and skill. The adventurer teacher finds little utility in common curriculum and standardized assessments. Rather, the adventurer teacher works to instill a connection with the community, allowing local circumstances to influence the path of learning. Life experience enriches learning and enhances student engagement. The adventurer teacher is an active listener who is willing to consider multiple perspectives with grace and humility. Enthusiastic and inquisitive by nature, the adventurer teacher believes that learning is a lifelong process; no matter where we are in life, there is always more to learn. The adventurer teacher is adaptable, continuously learning from previous practice and never afraid to fail.

Exploration is fundamental to the practice of an adventurer teacher. Through exploration, we discover ourselves as well as the world around us. We set out on an adventure not knowing what may happen, understanding that we will encounter successes, disappointments, and revelations along the way. Together, these experiences form our values, beliefs, and worldview. The same is true for our students. Exploration frees them to think, collect, assess, rethink, and so on . . . in the spirit of gaining knowledge and moving forward in life. Framed this way, failure is not only an option, but a particularly powerful learning tool. Thomas Edison, Madam Curie, Abraham Lincoln, and Sir Edmund Hillary failed numerous times in their efforts to explore the unknown and to challenge commonly accepted perspectives. Samuel Beckett suggests, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Beckett’s words offer encouragement and affirmation for the importance of critical thinking and persistence, both attributes of adventurers. The adventurer teacher inspires others to assume a posture of openness through this process.

Zander and Zander (2000) refer to the realm of possibility as the place where knowledge is gained through invention. Like explorers and inventors, adventurer teachers inspire students to see the beauty in possibility and to immerse themselves in it completely. I remember my early days as a classroom music teacher. Those days were filled with teaching students how to read notes, rhythms, harmonies, and melodies, as well as how to use their ears to find balance and play. We reached for these goals as a cohesive team rather than as individuals. I quickly discovered that the real challenge was to inspire students to explore the music beyond just the notes on the page. Anyone can play the notes, but I asked my students to create the kind of artistic expression that requires deeper exploration and openness to possibility. I also realized that the learning experience was incomplete if it did not include the opportunity for students to explore what the music meant to them, the emotions it induced, and the images it invoked. My story of An American Elegy illustrates how these conversations about the music allowed us to learn from each other, deepening our perspective through active listening. I do not want to repeat this too often, but I launch conversations with students never knowing what they will say or what direction the conversations will go. That, for me, is part of the adventure of teaching.

Ultimately, these discussions are steeped in faith and trust, not dissimilar to hiking an unknown trail, cooking with a different recipe, or starting a new job. To grow and learn, we must try new things, put aside assumptions, and take some risks. Adventurer teachers invite students to become explorers through open frameworks of possibility.

Courage is the key for an adventurer teacher. Not only the courage to engage with students on the great unknown, but also the courage to discover, cultivate, and trust one’s selfhood. As Parker Palmer reminds us so powerfully in The Courage to Teach, selfhood involves teaching beyond good technique. Rather, selfhood includes acknowledgement of your identity and integrity as a teacher. Put differently, adventurer teachers know who they are and they allow personal experience and values to shape their craft as educators. We all come from different places, with varying principles and beliefs based on a lifetime of unique encounters. Adventurer teachers feel a moral responsibility to harness those perspectives in ways that benefit each individual and the larger learning community. At the same time, they are keenly aware of the detrimental impact fear can have on students and teachers alike. Teachers and students must meet fear with hope, resilience, and the recognition that it may reflect something positive, such as concern for the well-being of others. As Palmer points out, it is natural to have fears; however we need not act from them.

Adventurer teachers believe deeply in the community of truth; education is most meaningful when collaborative in nature. Communal learning takes place when students are afforded the opportunity to engage with the learning materials from their own perspective. To make sure their students can do this, adventurer teachers foster relationships among learners and with the subject, rather than the traditional “sage-on-the-stage” approach. According to Palmer, it is the power of the subject that creates the connective core of all relationships within the community of truth. My experiences as a music teacher have reinforced Palmer’s idea that a community of truth is most dynamic when it focuses on the big subject. In their experience with An American Elegy, students synthesized their technical understanding of the music with personal emotions, and in so doing transformed their performance from one of simple music on a page to genuine art. More importantly, along the way they developed close relationships based on respect and humility. As a class we could not have achieved the learning and growth associated with the experience without a profound level of trust within a community of truth.

Adventurer teachers are open to the pedagogical surprises that pop up in the to-and-fro of instruction. We find ourselves in a bit of difficulty from time to time, but if we have prepared responsibly for our adventure—as wise adventurers and professional teachers do—then things should work. Adventurer teachers who name Christ do, in a sense, leave things in God’s hands. If we believe those are good hands, then we have every reason to view teaching as an adventure.

Work Cited and Consulted

Palmer, Parker. The Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

Zander, Rosamund Stone, and  Benjamin Zander. The Art of Possibility. London, UK: Penguin Books, 2002.

Derek Brown lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and serves as the assistant superintendent for assessment and accountability at the Oregon Department of Education. Derek was a music teacher in Oregon from 1998 to 2002, and is currently a doctoral candidate at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.