For playwright Ruhl, life has been a history of teachers. From her parents, through her kindergarten and school years, through college and graduate school, to professional life, Ruhl learns from everyone. She shows us how even the smallest moment can instruct, how a child can teach a parent, and how true creativity demands a willingness to learn. This is a memoir of brief anecdotes, told by a master storyteller. \u201cEvery Saturday, when I was a child, my father would take me to breakfast at Walker Brothers Pancake House, a place out of time in the suburbs of Chicago, full of stained glass and massive Dutch pancakes. My father taught me a new word every week. The ritual was holy to me. He would tell me the etymology, along with the word, so I could remember it.\u201d In college, she meets a great Classicist, and he remains a presence in her life: \u201csomeone who opened his home to his students; someone who thought the ancients had something compelling to tell us about how to live life now, how to face grief now. On a stone building on campus, these words are etched: \u2018Speak to the past and it shall teach thee.\u2019\u201d Eventually, Ruhl learns the greatest lesson: that we must, in the end, become our own best teachers\u2014that what we learn from others is not content, knowledge, facts, or frameworks but a way of living. \u201cI think that the best teachers secretly choose to keep teaching because they want to learn their whole lives long\u2014and they know teaching is their best chance of learning.\u201d Anyone who learns and teaches will find affirmation in this book.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For playwright Ruhl, life has been a history of teachers. From her parents, through her kindergarten and school years, through college and graduate school, to professional life, Ruhl learns from everyone. She shows us how even the smallest moment can instruct, how a child can teach a parent, and how true creativity demands a willingness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}