My gift as a teacher is the ability to "dance" with my students, to teach and learn with them through dialogue and interaction. When my students are willing to dance with me, the result can be a thing of beauty. When they refuse to dance, when my gift is denied, things start to become messy: I get hurt and angry, I resent the students — whom I blame for my plight — and I start treating them defensively, in ways that make the dance even less likely to happen.
But when I understand this liability as a trade-off for my strengths, something new and liberating arises within me. I no longer want to have my liability "fixed" — by learning how to dance solo, for example, when no one wants to dance with me — for to do that would be to compromise or even destroy my gift. Instead I want to learn how to respond more gracefully to students who refuse to dance, not projecting my limitation on them but embracing it as part of myself.
I will never be a good teacher for students who insist on remaining wallflowers throughout their careers — that is imply one of my many limits. But perhaps I can develop enough self-understanding to keep inviting the wallflowers onto the floor, holding open the possibility that some of them might hear the music, accept the invitation, and join me in the dance of teaching and learning.
— Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak