One of the many wonderful gifts coming to me later in life is my meeting the teacher in me, a part of me long buried and unrecognized, filled with meaning and emotion. One of the great ironies of my life is that I could never come to terms with education, I hated every day of school, learned little, confused and irritated every one of my teachers, and eventually abandoned the educational process completely. I was suspended from two different colleges for failing to attend class or complete exams, I spent my college time writing for alternative publications, exploring the wondrous subcultures of the 60’s, having sex and drinking. And I must say I learned a lot.

I am sure it was my fault, not the teachers, I was in a bad way much of the time, but I never experienced any kind of encouragement within the educational system, and the notion of encouragement began to grow in me.

Later in life, I taught at New York University for four years while writing my first novel, and while I loved teaching, I came to see that students were not a major concern of the academics around me, they were too preoccupied with other things. After that, I left education aside but after my crack-up at Bedlam Farm, I felt this calling arising in me. I began sponsoring open houses and art festivals (with my new friend Maria), teaching writing workshops at libraries and art centers, looking for a place to focus on this idea of encouragement. Along with love and photography, other things began opening up inside of me.

My first few efforts didn’t work – the wrong places, the wrong students, the wrong subjects.

Now, I have found a good home for teaching in the Hubbard Hall Arts Center in Cambridge, N.Y., a former opera house and freight complex turned into a beautiful theater and a number of classrooms and teaching complex offering classes in all kinds of things – theater, singing, dance, Tai Chi, writing. I donate my fees to the Hubbard Hall Scholarship Fund (next year I’ll take a small payment) I taught my Writer’s Workshop first (that went from six weeks to two years) and now, my “Art Of The Blog Class.” I’m eager to share the rapidly evolving ascending blogs of my students with you over the next few weeks. Two exciting ones are theshoulderedmuse.com by Roger McManus, a novelists and fantasy writer and elizabethnicholsross.com, a thoughtful celebration of life and death on life and death from a funeral home director in the small town of Cambridge, N.Y.

This class is fascinating as many of the students were unaware of blogs and even frightened of them. They are cranking out good stuff, finding their voices, writing up their lives and lessons and stories. The class is as wondrously varied as my town – a massage therapist, a singer, a retired Bishop, a novelist, a worker at a forest preserve, an undertaker, among others. They have all come alive, and are encouraging one another, something I preach and practice. They are embracing the notion of blogs as a means of voice in a disconnected society.

It turns out there is a teacher in me. I love the notion of encouragement, and I know how important it is. I am at an age where I have finally learned a few things and I am anxious to share them. Teaching only works with people who want to learn, otherwise it is just more background noise,  and I have been fortunate to find people eager to listen and learn, and to then go and make their own way. I see the teaching spirit inside of me as a spiritual being, an entity, a calling. In our culture, aging is seen as being about health care and the warehousing of people and money and downsizing, but the gift of aging is wisdom and sharing, when it is sought and can be given.

I think the teacher in me has long wanted to come out. Joseph Campbell writes that the key to aging is knowing who you are and where you are in life. The teacher in me has long wanted to be free, and is determined to offer lessons he was never able to learn or receive.