The Tao of Teaching

    Lest you think the Highlands, NC, native is cutting corners or looking for an easy ride, think again.
    His responsibilities in the drama department and as an English teacher have been all-consuming.
    In fact, during rehearsals for and the production of the fall musical and spring play, it’s not unusual for him to put in days that begin early and end somewhere around midnight if he’s lucky.
    Which is the primary reason he’s leaving Collegiate at the end of the term.
    “The hours in the theater aren’t sustainable for a family,” said Shaffner, who with his wife Laura have a two-year-old daughter Vivienne and are expecting another in early October.
    “It’s extremely difficult for me as a father because I miss my family.  It’s extremely difficult for my wife who’s raising what’s going to be two children on her own, basically.
    “When I told the theater students, there were 87 of them in the room. I felt like I was choosing between two families.  
    “It was a hard thing to say and a hard thing to hear because we’ve grown to mean so much to each other.
    “I have the biological family I’ll always put first. I also have this family of students.”
    Shaffner and I sat down recently and talked about his time on North Mooreland Road. What follows are excerpts of our conversation.

    Can you put your experience at Collegiate into words?

    It’s really been an amazing time.  This has been an incredible place to be ever since I got here.  I was so excited and so happy, and I think that every experience I’ve had has just deepened that.
    Not many people know that I came here because they would let me teach English too.  I was more qualified in the theater at the time, but I’ve loved my time in the English classroom just as much as in the theater although the theater has been more visible.

    You’ve established very good rapport with your students.

    If I were to put everything in perspective, what’s so exciting is watching their development.  When an 8th grader auditions for the fall musical and then graduates, it’s almost like time-lapse photography or if you put the two images over top of each other.
    I’ve seen students grow up. I don’t think there is any more amazing feeling than that.

    What is it about teaching that excites you?  

    We certainly teach grammar and critical thinking and good writing, but with each text there’s an entirely new opportunity about ways of thinking about the world.  
    In my mythology class, we get to explore Hindu ways of thinking that are so drastically different from the ways we’ve thought about the world. It really is mind-expanding.
    It’s almost a cliché, but every time I read Mahabharata (one of the class texts and a central work of Hinduism), the students teach me something new.
     I’ve now read it maybe 20 times.  Each time I feel like I’m discovering something new because there’s a new opinion in the room. I really encourage that from students.  I really want their critical thinking to come through. That’s what’s so exciting.  

    So while you’re teaching your students, they’re actually teaching you?  That’s the essence of great teaching.

    It’s also what keeps every teacher fresh.  It’s what keeps us alive…when the student-teacher relationship can get inverted.
    Another thing I do in that mythology class is zen koan.  Those are the riddles that seem so incomprehensible and can’t be solved, like What is the sound of one hand clapping?
    When you study them, you start to understand that they do have answers.  They’re just unexpected answers, and the correct answer is different for each student in each moment of his life.  So what we do the first day is confront some of them, and at the end, that’s part of their final exam.
    What I love about those is that the goal of the zen master is to be surpassed by the student because only then is the student a self-responsible adult and no longer dependent on the teacher.  
    If a student thinks about things in a more complex way than you do, that’s not something that good teachers feel threatened by.  It’s something they’re excited about.  

    So that’s what you mean about becoming useless?

    You want to wipe yourself out of the experience to where they do not need you anymore.  They may enjoy being around you.  They may be grateful to you, but ultimately it’s not the dependency.  That’s when they can become self-functioning adults.

    Have you had a proudest moment, a pinnacle, as the theater director?

    That’s a hard question because every time I sit in the audience, I don’t see what I’ve done.  I see what they’re doing, and the pride just overwhelms me every time.  So whatever production I love best is whatever I’m doing at that moment.  
    If I do look back, what I’m really proud of is the diversity of what we’ve done. My first year, we did Bye Bye Birdie which is about as standard as they come.  Then, we did the Caucasian Chalk Circle, which is East German expressionism.  
    So we went about it from A to Z there.  I’m very proud of The Crucible (this spring) because it was probably the best acting we’ve seen on the stage.  There was nothing to hide behind.  No dances, no music.  It was just raw acting, and the acting was superb.  
    I’m proud that when we set the bar so high, we found a way to rise to it.

    Your students perceive you as a mentor.

    That’s been a joy for me…having the opportunity to help them through critical thinking and writing but also the ability to help them make life decisions.  That’s what, I think, is most attractive to most teachers.  It’s being able to function in more than one capacity.
    The reason I became a director is that I didn’t want to be on stage.  My favorite thing – and I can’t do that here anymore – but in professional theater was to sit in the audience, and nobody would know me.  Then I could hear what they thought about my play.            
    My goal in life has always to be as anonymous as possible.  I think I’ve failed in that here.
    I really want this exit to be as quiet as it can be because the real value I get is in the one-on-one conversations. I’m not very good with ceremony.
                               -- Weldon Bradshaw