Today I sat with two new friends, “new” only by the virtue that we met just a few short months ago at Orientation. They’re the sort of new friends who actually feel like old friends, those rare people with whom you’ve shared deep and meaningful moments of connection despite the brevity of your acquaintance. Our coffees puffed wandering wisps of steam into the air as the conversation meandered from ontologies power to inequalities in institutions to hope for the ways we might make the world ever so slightly better and more beautiful for our being in it.
The professors here at Harvard are formidable thinkers, kind colleagues, and inspiring examples. It’s an absolute privilege to learn from each of them. The teachers I cannot forget to mention, however, are these friends.
We gather in the lobby of Gutman, we get a second cup of coffee together, then a third, we stop when we pass each other in the street and make each other late for things because a simple “hello” is never enough. We come from startlingly diverse walks of life and are interested in vastly different things, but it is precisely in this difference that the space to listen and learn opens wide.
Appian Way is a place unlike any other, alive with intellectual energy and activating passion. Here, we think a lot about what it means to teach and learn, and these friends of mine remind me that the locus is education spills well beyond the classroom. They push and question my thinking, listen closely as I try on new ideas, stand as comrades in times when it all feels like too much and as a ready cheer squad when breakthroughs are had. Are these not precisely the marks of the best teachers in our lives?
Blog written by Courtney Tee. Photo provided by Courtney Tee.
My name is Courtney Tee and I am a master’s candidate in the Specialized Studies program from Houston, Texas. My interest lies in the formation of knowledge in nontraditional spaces, which places me at the intersection of educational research, social theory, epistemology, and creative and active ways of learning. I work part time for Design for Change: USA doing research on design learning.
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