(Google translation) 'Teachers move with their whole being'. Under this title, one of the four core competencies of teaching is summarized in the vision text of the Teacher Training at UCLL (UCLL, nd). It is an expression that is difficult to make concrete at first sight. After the interview with Mieke, the description gains meaning for us. If there is one thing that stands out about Mieke, it is that she indeed 'moves with all her being'. However we see her busy in practice, whether she talks about her household, her motherhood, supervising students (she is also a practical lecturer at the teacher training), preparing lessons or the children in her class, the same things always come up. upwards. Just as she is a 'busy bee' at home, she also expects her students to commit to the training. Just as she curiously examines everything they meet on their way with her own son and daughter, she also sends the children from her class out into the world. Just as she sometimes craves rest, she also schedules breaks for her students. Her gratitude for the appreciation she receives from colleagues corresponds to the way she treats the children on the playground. In the same way, her mildness for what she has not yet mastered herself is in line with that for what children are not yet able to do, and the enthusiasm with which she engages in the interview is also reflected in the way she develops her university projects. .

The special harmony that we experience at Mieke impresses us. In search of an answer to the question of exactly how this relates to her teaching, we delve into the literature. We find a first puzzle piece in the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (Ruijters, 2012). In the early 1970s, they conducted research into learning organizations and wondered how people can bring their thinking and doing more into balance. According to them, we have a mental map in our head, an amalgam of views, insights, values that guide actions without us necessarily being aware of it. However, this theory in use does not always correspond to our espoused theory, the way in which we describe one's own actions. An example is the teacher who, during parental contact, tells how she wants to instill a critical attitude to her students (espoused theory), but during her explanation is afraid of the critical questions from parents, who knows from which theory in use. Maybe she's learned that "to be strong" means "don't give in," she's worried about losing her authority by admitting criticism, or a coworker has told her not to give "difficult parents" too much space in the conversation. . It was the life's work of Argyris and Schön to guide people to achieve more agreement between espoused theory and theory in use, so that the ideals we have in our heads are also effectively translated into our actions.

Mieke's ideals find their way flawlessly into her actions. The description Walk the Talk (Ruijters, 2012, p. 210) fits her perfectly. This is indeed what makes her teaching powerful. Still, the picture isn't quite right. Argyris and Schön see people as the designers of their own actions who can control and optimize the effectiveness of their own professional actions in a 'learning organization' (Ruijters, 2012, p. 208). That doesn't quite fit with what Mieke herself says about how she gives shape to her teaching profession.

When we read in The Lightness of Education: An Exercise in Looking, Reading and Thinking (2008) about 'meditation' as the form of reflexivity inherent in the teacher as 'master', the pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place better. . Masschelein describes this meditation as "a (lifelong, philosophical) exercise in which one checks (or tests, tests) whether what one thinks and what one does are in agreement, and in which one tries to transform oneself in such a way that there is that agreement" (p. 29). He also speaks of a harmony between thinking and doing. At the same time, this is not, as with Argyris and Schön, about optimizing professional actions resulting in greater expertise. Rather, it is a form of self-care. “The self (…) is that which underlies action and needs constant care (…) the mastery of a person shows itself to the extent that a person is present in what he/she is doing, and that a person is in what he/she/it is doing. she does and says also shows who he/she is or what he/she stands for” (p. 29).

Geert Kelchtermans (1999; 2003/4) uses the term 'vulnerability' to indicate that the teacher's person (who he/she is and what he/she stands for) is closely linked to his/her professional identity. This vulnerability, like the words 'meditation' and 'self-care' in Masschelein, points to a dimension of teaching in which there is no question of control or efficiency. This becomes even more apparent when we connect this idea of vulnerability with the words of philosopher Rudi Visker in his article Whistling in the dark (2001). There he speaks of “the taciturn bond between us and our values”: “Suddenly we realize that we are attached to values that have us rather than we have them” (p. 155). Suddenly it seems to be almost directly about Mieke telling us that she just can't seem to get her own children to 'just do something for once'. She constantly stimulates them to think, to be curious, to explore. It compels her to feel pity - "Oh my God!" - and approval when her husband stands up for them. And yet she can't help it. It has her in its grip, she is stuck with it, she cannot do anything else. It's stronger than herself. We notice it again when we visit Mieke's class. At the end of the day she goes over the homework with the students. One of the children asks: "What if this isn't finished on Thursday?" Mieke reacts bewildered: “What do you mean, 'not finished'? How so? How do you get to that now?" In this astonishment, the importance of hard work for Mieke is evident. Rather than a conscious choice, it seems that the idea that a child would not feel like working just doesn't fit in her head.[1]

The power of Mieke's teaching, which shows itself in the special harmony between who she is, what she thinks, what she stands for, and what she does, does not seem to us to be the result of some conscious design process that Mieke has completely in her own hands. has had. 'Meditation', 'self-care' and 'vulnerability' are words that seem to fit better with the way she 'moves with all her being' as a teacher. Teaching is not simply a skill that can be optimized. It is as Masschelein (2008) writes: “Education always has exactly that at stake: the question of who we are today, l'homme que nous sommes, the human being that we are'” (p. 18).

Coincidentally or not, it is precisely that harmony between thinking and doing that we as researchers lack when we conduct the interview. After all, we do know (espoused theory). As a philosophical discussion leader, we are trained in suspending judgments. As draftsmen we are trained in the art of contemplation. And yet in our first interview with Mieke we do exactly the opposite. We frantically try to control what we will be told. Our questions are guiding and try to tempt her to pronounce the words that fit the literature we have in mind. The result is a reluctant conversation that can only be knitted together into a story with blood, sweat and tears. Fortunately, Mieke is an enthusiastic chatterbox.

In that story Mieke shows us the way of Abraham. The texts in Genesis about that first patriarch of Israel evoke him as a man who has the courage to dive into the world and face the unknown. God calls him away from his homeland: “Depart from your country” (Gen 12:1). And Abraham goes. His father Terah had already shown him the journey to the promised land. However, he runs aground halfway, in Haran. A colleague once suggested that Terah might have prepared too much. Maybe he got nowhere because he planned the road too meticulously, packed the suitcases too much with security equipment, checked the route so that nothing could go wrong. Levinas (1949/2001, pp. 266-267)[2] expresses a similar reservation when he pits Abraham against Ulysses. While Ulysses returns to Ithaca after his wanderings, Abraham never comes home. You could say that Ulysses can be compared to the tourist from Grand Hotel Europa (Pfeijffer, 2018), who approaches the world from his own frames of reference and thus returns to his own, known, safe home, enriched but unaltered. A real encounter with the Other never took place. That is drawn into its own world from the outset and reduced to (more of) the Same. Abraham, on the other hand, leaves and never returns to known territory.[3]

He pulls away into the unknown. He doesn't cover himself. He doesn't plan the trip. He doesn't know what's coming. He goes. Believing, that's what Abraham does: going on the road in confidence. He doesn't know where, he doesn't know why, he doesn't know how. But he goes. It shows an openness to the unknown. Whatever he encounters on his way is received in hospitality. Like the three strangers who suddenly stand in front of his tent. Abraham welcomes them with open arms. In response to that reception, they announce to him that Sarah, his wife, is about to become pregnant. Both Abraham and Sarah laugh when they hear that. After all, they are both over 90 years old. A baby at that age, that is completely beyond the certainties in life and the plans you still make. Let that be the very meaning of the barrenness that befalls many biblical women: that things do not consist of the strength of your own potency, but of God's grace. In other words, the valuable things in life cannot be arranged for yourself, they fall to you. The baby of Abraham and Sarah will be called Isaac, a name that is related to the word "laughter", because "God made me laugh", says Sarah (Gen 21:6).

Could it be that the smile in life comes from the moment you can be open in hospitality to the unknown that comes your way? The moment you dare to face the unknown instead of holding on to the safe path? When Mieke talks about what gives her pleasure in teaching, it always has to do with that. Curious, she goes out into the world with her children. She is happily surprised by what they discover along the way. She receives everything in her path hospitably, whether it's a boy without a fluorescent vest, a student who is late, a forest that invites you to discover its layers or (steering or not) questions from researchers at UCLL. At the same time, Mieke does not go out unprepared. She certainly knows the WO curriculum by heart. What would a teacher be without any kind of preparation, without thinking about where to go, without any goal in mind? That is not Abraham's question. The question that arises is, where is the smile?

Every teaching is also always a 'going into the dark', says Biesta (2019) in a lecture for the teacher educators at UCLL.[4] Do we dare to face that with open arms? We see the statement come to life with Mieke and let us be inspired by it in the following interviews. The stories we receive as gifts invariably bring a smile to our faces.

[1] While visiting her class, Mieke casually remarks somewhere in the corridors that the children in her class are always in order with their homework. The question to what extent values can be transferred consciously and intentionally, or whether the pedagogical 'happens' rather in a way that we can never fully control - a question that Kelchtermans and Simons ask themselves in the article In search of the pedagogical significance of education: Beyond functionalism and paradigm pressure (2007) – based on this anecdote, it certainly seems a question worth investigating.

[2] “The radically thought-out Work is indeed a movement from the Same towards the Other which never returns to the Same. To the myth of Odysseus returning to Ithaca, we would like to oppose the story of Abraham leaving his homeland forever for a land still unknown and forbidding his servant to bring even his son back to this starting point. The Work thought through to the end requires a radical generosity of the Same which in the Work goes towards the Other. It therefore demands ingratitude from the Other. Gratitude would be precisely the return of the movement to its origin. "

[3] The story of Abraham gives words to Israel's experience that thinking changes forever the moment the Jewish people breaks with polytheism. Peter Schmidt (1991) describes how at that moment another possibility arises to think of time, not as a cyclical process in which everything always happens again (in the end the experiences of life and death are always and everywhere the same), but as a linear process. line, enabling history and the emergence of people who fundamentally change the course of things. There is a break with the past. This creates a completely different way of thinking and living.

[4] Biesta makes this statement when he looks at teaching through Ken Currie's beautiful artwork Three Oncologists.