Because deep teaching must transcend or encompass powerful symbols such as money, excellence in teaching requires we understand how such compensation affects our work.
Money is a strong motive force. If your students pay you to teach, money necessarily becomes part of what you teach them, whether you intend it to or not. By the very act of accepting payment you show and thus teach that your teaching may be bought. When students believe their ability to pay is why you teach them, it affects how and what they learn.
Being paid to teach also affect us as teachers. We may wonder at our value when it is represented by money. We may be affected by the control of those who pay us.
If the money takes steps around you, as it does for most public school teachers, traveling from citizen to government and then back to the school and to the teacher, the influence that your monetary compensation has on your students is blunted because they are less aware of the flow of these funds. If parents instead gave their children cash to give you directly, what those students learn and how they understand your teaching would change markedly, as would your own understanding.
For the student who pays you directly, it is important to take into account that influence while at the same time separating the teaching from that influence – not an easy task. Additionally, it is important to separate out the teacher’s need for compensation from the student’s need to compensate. We may not need the money, but the student may need to pay in order to learn. Or the other way around.
Further, what money means to one student is different from what it means to the next. A rich student and a poor student will not have the same experience in learning in the same environment, even while paying the same amount. While each teacher-student relationship is unique, students in a classroom expect to be treated similarly. A difference in base wealth creates a difference in the learning experience even though on the surface it may appear equitable.
Thus we must look for and understand the currencies in play. Money and its absence are both motive forces. A student who believes they pay a lot to be taught may feel they need not give much else, such as respect or effort. A student who pays no money may feel they are incurring an obligation and attempt to compensate in other ways. Such reactions may interfere with the teaching, or they may help it, and we must seek to understand the student and their motivations so that we can best serve their learning.
If you have paying students, you have two issues to consider: for yourself, how money affects your teaching and how to allow for that influence. For the student, how to separate out the money from the learning, or how to include it in your teaching, or both.
My offered practice: If you are paid to teach, consider how your teaching would change – or stop altogether – if there were no money at all. Or less money. Or more. Consider how your teaching would change if students paid you directly, or in differing amounts. Follow the trail of influence that money plays in your teaching. Consider how your deepest and most important teachings are affected.
I have experienced deep teaching from those for whom it clearly is the way to make a living, (for some, a very good living) and at times it has made me skeptical. Yet I understand that if someone has devoted their life to teaching, they must have income. And money is simply a form of energy exchange. Is it that much different from other motivations for teaching such as love, admiration, pride etc? In one sense, there is with money a more deliberate, or at least overt, exchange. You give me X amount of money and I will give you X amount of my time for the sake of your learning. I appreciate the invitation to consider the absence of money and the difference it makes in the dynamic.
I teach both for money and for free, the exact same classes. At Seattle Free School everyone who teaches does so without money exchanging hands as we never take cash donations of any kind from anyone ever… we run without money. There is more then money to gain when teaching for free… a better confidence in speaking and presenting, a feeling of growing your community, a fun time to share with others. Whatever it is, it is powerful enough to keep people teaching without money. Sadly many people can’t see the value in free, believe that things must be the way they always have been- not exchanging money is change and people aren’t always fond of that and sometimes even find the idea offensive.
Jessica, thank you very much for posting. I certainly agree that there is much for a teacher to gain from teaching where money is not involved. I do this as well.
Like you, I have come across teachers and students disturbed at the idea of teaching without money. For the student it may be fear of hidden obligations and costs, or fear that the teaching is not worth having if it asks nothing back. For teachers, there is often the fear that their work will not be valued if they do not ask something back for it. Of course, these fears are not without foundation. I
I am intrigued that you teach the same class for and without money. I would like to hear more about what differences you have found, if any, between how students learn with and without in that same class.
I have found that some teachers are able to teach their students to learn without money (along with whatever else they are teaching) even when the students are uncomfortable with this. I have never seen a student take on that task, but I imagine it can be done if the teacher is sufficiently receptive. Perhaps in your school you might offer such a class, an exploration of teaching without money and how to understand such teaching, how to look for hidden costs, how to be sure the exchange (whatever it is) is clean and unfettered. I would be interested in such a class.
Janet, thank you for this exploration. Not only does teaching for money influence the teaching, but it is often left an unspoken and unaddressed influence. As taboo as sex in the teacher-student relationship, the subject often stays in the dark, affecting the work without being part of the work.
I agree, all (or nearly all) teachers must have food and shelter to do good work, so if they are full-time teachers, they must find a way to get money for teaching. I am, of course, not advocating teachers teach for free, nor am I saying they should avoid it; I am inviting teachers of dept to bring the issues into the light and make them part of their understanding of their work.
Is money different than other things that might be exchanged? I say yes, and very much so. Because money abstracts value away from anything that is directly usable, it changes the way we understand the thing purchased and the way we understand ourselves. Indeed, some would claim that a thing you cannot use that nonetheless creates status and commands respect is a magic talisman.
An interesting exercise that teachers might take on: offer a short additional class in something, and in payment require each person to bring you a meal or fruit or something else directly useful. See if this changes the teaching.
Thanks as usual for your thoughts.
I’ve struggled with this in my life – on both sides of the fence. There were times I was barely able to pay for teaching, yet wanted to offer *something*. And in some of my subcultures teaching for money is often frowned upon, but when I was called upon to teach more and more, I had to face my inner shame at asking for fair compensation. I teach full time now – because people keep asking – and try to provide outlets for those who can to pay more, and those who have financial need, to pay less or sometimes not at all. People who study with me steadily all have to work on their relationship with money. And I periodically examine my own.
Other thoughts: Sometimes when a full scholarship has been offered, the person has not even bothered to show up. This is not always true, of course. It also happens that when people pay a deposit, they are more likely to attend a weekend class, for example, than if they do not. Money does seem to be a motivator in our culture.
However, I do distrust people who charge what seem to be high rates for teaching. James Ray and his $9,000 for a warrior week that ended in the terrible ’sweat lodge’ tragedy comes to mind, of course.
Just last month, after doing some money work, I joked to some students that I was glad to not have to take a goat with me on the airplane. Money *is* portable exchange. The money buys food for my body and pays my rent, and I appreciate it for that, but in the long run, I teach because the teaching itself feeds my spirit and helps me to learn. I still pay my official teachers, too, whether in time or money exchange. That feels right to me.
Here’s a post written after that recent weekend in which money was one of our topics:
http://yezida.livejournal.com/2010/01/20/
(sorry for the LJ, my web feed is under construction)
Can you say more about how the abstract qualities of money affect teaching? It makes sense, but I’d like to hear more.
My experience of food for teaching has proven to be quite different from other types of remuneration. The immediate nature of consumption and nourishment is very concrete. When I have been the one providing food to a teacher, I have been surprised at the degree to which I felt my intention engaged.
I appreciate that you’re stressing the value of bringing the issue to the table for consideration, rather than making a specific judgment about it as being right or wrong.
Thorn, good thoughts, and thank you.
Currency has a way of standing in for the thing that it is supposed to be able to purchase, as if it were the thing itself, which of course it is not. It as if we are standing at a lunch counter, deciding what to buy, and we tell ourselves that we can have anything on the menu we want with our money, so we value the money as if it were the thing, the food, the substance, which would be absurd, yet at some level we see it that way.
You found this with the student to whom you offered the scholarship – teaching for no money – who failed to show up for the class. If it costs no money, what can it be worth? One way to counter this is to say up front that the teaching must be paid for with something beyond currency, that currency alone – present or not present – is simply not enough.
When I teach for no money, I look for a balance that suits my needs, the student’s needs, and the needs of the teaching relationship between us. I may look for a cultural context that embodies the teaching (or my learning) as something besides teaching (see my post on Teaching as a Colleague). I may ask for non-currency compensation of some sort, a trade. I may ask something very hard to engage the student’s clarity about the deeper cost of the teaching and to show myself that the student is committed. Rarely do I ask nothing at all from an explicit teaching arrangement, as I find it rarely works well.
When a student pays money for a teaching, they often construct an idea of what they should be getting in return. They become consumers and because of our pervasive consumer culture they know that they should be weighing the value of the exchange, the teaching for their currency. Some deeper teachings require a different frame than this allows.
Likewise, when paid with currency the teacher can feel pressure to produce a curriculum that is equal to the money, when these things can never be equal. This can limit many approaches to teaching and learning.
This is a powerful and subtle issue. Whether we teach for currency or not, we must look to see how this choice affects the student and ourselves, each time, with each student. The most important thing for us as teachers is to look.