I saw him preparing to teach, taking his students seriously, pre-
paring outlines for their study, and teaching them for the long haul rather
than for their immediate gratification. I suppose this extended apprenticeship. watching and listening over many years. led me to expect that
teaching was the most natural and the easiest thing to do. I confess that I
did not learn very much that was new during my teachers college experience. Much of what I learned confirmed lessons learned intuitively and
very much earlier as a young girl. I also learned a repertoire of sophisticated vocabulary to describe what were essentially very simple concepts.
And I learned sets of rules for how I should conduct myself in the classroom.
When I became at teacher myself. I quickly discovered that my father's
style and the rules I had been taught at teachers college did not fit me. I had
learned rules set up by men and I had watched a male teacher at work for
many years. Here I was as a woman trying to fit myself into a model prescribed by men. I was a square peg in a round hole. Madeline Grumet describes my experience when she writes about school being our "father's
house". For me, it was just that. It was a place where I aped what I saw men
do even though it felt all wrong for me. Having never seen. heard. or read
the work of outstanding teachers who broke these molds. I had no idea that
there could be other ways of being a teacher and doing the work of teaching. And it seemed that to be myself as a teacher I would have to "transgress“ the rules I had been taught to follow.