In a recent interview, operatic soprano and now emerging director, Patricia Racette, responded to this question: “What advice would you give, in 2022, to yourself as a young singer?” Her response was telling. “As a performer,” she would advise herself, “you need to find that exit portal [inside of yourself] for what you are trying to implement interpretively. You think it, you feel it, and have it going on all inside—but that does not mean it is getting out. Find that exit portal.”
She continues: “Any performer that has that experience—the exodus of interpretive energy—knows that there is something so incredibly empowering and humbling about it. It’s like the power of riding on a wave.”
In so many ways, good teaching is also about finding that exit portal—in this case, helping our students locate it. Some students will discover it by virtue of the ways in which our own enthusiasm and compassion have found their own proper exit route, from the inside of us to the outside. Seeing how a subject matter excites us, as well as how much we love what we do, the student searches internally for the ramp that will bring out their own curiosity and eagerness to learn more. In other instances, we as teachers need to work much harder at searching for that outlet, that unique spark, in our students. That is why, for a good teacher, a “hard to reach student” is more of a challenge than an annoyance. Helping them find their own exit routes becomes an act of love, a recognition of their own unique humanity and dignity.
In a New Yorker cartoon, a doctor is winding up his examination of a patient, and gives the patient his diagnosis. “I think there is a novel inside of you that needs to come out.” Good teaching is about the discovery, indeed the diagnosis, of what, from our professional judgment, may be going on inside of our students, and what needs to come out. Diagnosis is followed by the effort to discover the best way possible for what is inside of the student to find its way to the light of day.
What makes this so challenging is that there is no one way of reaching our students. That is why, increasingly, good teaching is about exploring a variety of ways in which different students will discover their own exit portals. We make a variety of judgments not only from the standpoint of pedagogy, but from what we know of human nature and character, not to mention our fundamental care for reaching students in whatever appropriate ways we can.
Finding the exit portal is the work not only of teachers and their students, it also occurs on an institutional level. Over the years I have heard so many schools and churches speak about the enormous potential they believe they have, all the while accompanied by a concern, indeed sometimes a frustration, on how to release that potential in a more impactful way. That concern is often accompanied by another: how we wish more people knew about us. We are eager to make people more aware of and more eager to be a part of the magic of this particular community. “How come more people are not beating down our doors?’ many will ask. What we know of ourselves does not seem to be getting better known, the story is not being more fully told. In Racette’s words, “You think it, you feel it, and have it going on all inside—but that does not mean it is getting out.”
In some cases, the exit ramp has not been found. What is inside the community, “what is there,” as Racette put it, has not made its way to the surface, leaving the community feeling as if it is not near its full potential, nor that the outside world does not fully know what we have to offer.
What is the exit portal? What is the key, the right route, for a community’s energy and vitality to be more fully released and known?
Over the past two years, a remarkable thing has occurred in so many Episcopal schools, as they grapple with articulating their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging. They have discovered an exit portal, a way of making their own unique case to the internal and external community. That portal is the link between Episcopal identity and DEIJB work. In some cases, that exit portal has served as a means of easing the school into a larger embrace of what it seeks to do in becoming a more inclusive community. In other ways, Episcopal identity’s emphasis on the dignity and worth of every human being becomes the lively springboard for further work and commitment. Faced with the challenge of framing the important work ahead, Episcopal identity has been rediscovered, in this case as that all-important exit portal, giving a theological foundation as well as a recognizable link to the school’s roots to what it seeks to be and do.
One can only wonder what other ways Episcopal identity can serve as an exit portal for other essential initiatives and priorities in the years ahead!
The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., is Executive Director of the National Association Episcopal Schools.