The helpmeet role and being a teacher

Reflecting recently on the prevalence in my family of choosing the helpmeet role--I have been a teacher almost twenty years now, and my father was a teacher all his life. Teaching is most effective, I've found, when it truly embodies the "helpful partner" approach. But it's more than the difference between "guide on the side" and "sage on the stage"--for my father, it was choosing a supporting rather than a leading role, being the Vice-Chairman, the Assistant Director, to a lead personage in whom he had confidence and with whom he had a clear working relationship.

I've often done the same in my teaching career, supporting the principal at Alianza, supporting a colleague in the school district's technology planning effort, and now having a Technology Director who's been a teacher and has a clear vision of technology integration as key.

This reflection came in thinking about the helpmeet role as it's being played out by two of my sisters right now. One (having just lost her job) is becoming a supporting partner in her partner's massage business, setting appointments and making phone calls. Another sister is working as a production manager for a stage play, and so is the helpmeet to any number of more "senior" folks in the theater.