The Most Helpful Thing I Stopped Doing as a Teacher
What early February teaches about the cost of answering too soon
If this post resonated with you,
please like it + leave a comment
about what it shifted in you.
Early in my teaching career, I thought my job was to have the answers.
A student would begin to ask a question, stumbling through the words, circling something they could not yet name. I would jump in. I knew what they were trying to ask. I could see where they were headed. So I answered the question I thought they wanted answered, proud of how quickly I could help.
It took me years to realize I was not helping.
I was robbing them and myself.
I Gave Them My Insight Instead of Their Own
When I answered before a student finished struggling, I filled the space that their learning needed to occupy. I made myself feel competent while making them feel like they needed me to understand. The worst part? I was not even answering their question.
I was answering the question I projected onto them.
Their struggle was their struggle. Their question was still forming. By rushing to resolve it, I took something from them that was not mine to take. Ironically, all this happened in the spirit of helpfulness and support.
This is what eager helpers do. We see someone in the uncomfortable space of not knowing, and we rush to fill it because their discomfort makes us uncomfortable. We call it generosity.
Often it is impatience dressed as kindness.
The Wisdom of Waiting
I learned to wait.
Not in a Socratic Dialogue way, where you possibly withhold answers to guide or force someone toward a predetermined conclusion. That is its own form of manipulation. I learned to wait because the student usually knew more than they realized.
They were not asking me for information.
They were thinking out loud, working something through, discovering what they actually wanted to know. When I held space instead of filling it, something different happened. They would pause. Rephrase. Go deeper.
Often, they would answer their own question.
The answer they found was better than anything I would have given them. Their learning became their own. I could not learn for them. No one can learn for anyone else.
But I could create the conditions where their own knowing had room to emerge.
What the Earth Teaches About Timing
We are in early February now. In the Celtic calendar, this is Imbolc, the threshold between deep winter and the first stirring of spring. The word means “in the belly.” It refers to new life quickening but not yet born.
The lambs are stirring in the ewes. The seeds are awakening underground. The light is returning, but spring has not arrived.
This is the season of not yet.
It is also the season most people rush through. We want results. We want emergence. We want to skip the uncomfortable middle where things are forming but not yet formed. But this middle space is where the real work happens.
This is where the struggling student discovers their own question, or even their own answers.
This is where the seed develops roots before it breaks ground. This is where what is becoming has room to become. When we rush this season, we get shallow roots. Premature answers. Insights that belong to someone else instead of emerging from our own wrestling.
The Question You Might Be Forcing
I do not know what is forming in you that has not yet emerged.
But something is.
Maybe it is a project you keep trying to force into clarity before the clarity has arrived. Maybe it is a decision you are pressuring yourself to make before you have lived with the question long enough. Maybe it is grief that has not yet moved, and you keep asking yourself why you are not over it yet or why you have not “dealt with it.”
Maybe it is a relationship in transition.
Maybe it is a calling you sense but cannot name, and the not knowing feels unbearable. Here is what I learned from all those years of answering too soon: the struggle is not a problem to be solved.
It is the process by which something becomes yours.
When you rush past it, you end up with answers that do not fit. Insights borrowed from someone else. Clarity that dissolves because it was never rooted in your own wrestling.
Notice Where You Are Filling Space
This week, notice where you are trying to force emergence.
Where are you answering your own question before you have finished asking it? Where are you filling space that needs to stay open? Where are you rushing past the struggle because the struggle is uncomfortable?
You do not need to fix any of this.
Just notice it. Noticing is enough. Noticing is the practice.
The season between seasons will not last forever. What is forming in you will eventually emerge. But it will emerge stronger, more rooted, more truly yours if you let it have the time it needs.
Wisdom is noticing this and doing something with it.
Often, the something we need to do is nothing at all. Just hold the space. Just wait. Just trust that what is quickening in the dark knows its own timing better than we do.
Do You Feel Called to a Deeper Relationship with the Living Earth?
This is the practice we return to again and again in EcoSpirituality: learning to trust the Earth’s timing instead of forcing our own. If you want to explore this more deeply, with guidance and community, the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate begins in March. But the practice starts now, in whatever is not yet in your own life.
What are you holding that has not yet emerged?
Walk With Me
If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us
In September 2026, I am leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino. Seven days of walking in presence on a 1,000 year old pilgrimage path. Only 4 participants. Private rooms for everyone. Every accommodation directly on the path where pilgrims have walked for centuries. Silence as practice, not punishment. If you are curious about what contemplative pilgrimage might offer you, more details are here.
This is a fantastic read, Jeffrey!
Great reflections Jeffrey! Thank you