Jesus and Transformative Teaching

In our time, the image of the teacher has become so thoroughly the product of a professionalized, institutionalized context that it is increasingly difficult to imagine radically different alternatives of what a teacher might be. A teacher has a classroom, has a certain number of students; has an advanced degree, has a supervisor: across nations and cultures we can envision this archetype in our mind's eye. If a young person says they want to become a teacher, everyone has a pretty similar idea of what that means. Of course the word "teacher" is used more broadly, and people are called teachers who do not fit all these characteristics. Nevertheless, in general, most people (including those who work in university departments or colleges of education) proceed from day to day on the assumption that preparing teachers means preparing students for this very particular role and context.