The best teaching I’ve ever witnessed, and the best mentorship I’ve ever received, happened side by side.
Not in front of a classroom or behind a podium, but standing in a gallery, quietly looking, thinking together. There’s something about standing beside another person in front of a work of art that levels everything. Hierarchies fade. The air shifts. The conversation becomes less about instruction and more about discovery.
That’s where the truest kind of teaching lives, in shared attention.
When I mentor new educators, I try not to tell them what to do. I stand beside them.
I watch the group with them. We notice things together; who’s leaning forward, who’s holding back, what’s happening in the silences. Afterward, we talk about what we saw, what we felt, what we might do differently next time. It’s a slow process, but it’s the only one that works. Because this kind of teaching isn’t about memorizing technique; it’s about cultivating perception. And perception only deepens through time, conversation, and care.
Standing beside also means giving permission to not know. To be curious, uncertain, even uncomfortable. That’s what most of us forget when we start teaching: that we don’t have to have the answers; we just have to make space for the questions.
I think often of my own mentors, the ones who didn’t give me solutions, but attention. They didn’t perform their expertise; they embodied it quietly. They asked questions that lingered long after the conversation ended. They made me feel capable, not corrected.
Their way of standing beside me gave me the courage to develop my own stance and to trust my instincts, to read a room, to lead without forcing.
That’s how knowledge in this field really passes down: through presence, not performance.
Through modeling, not management. Through companionship, not control.
I’ve learned that standing beside someone in teaching, in mentorship, in leadership — is also an act of humility. It says: We’re both learning here. It resists the institutional impulse to posture or prescribe. It makes room for authenticity, for grace, for error.
There’s something profoundly ethical about that posture. It’s not about lowering standards; it’s about raising trust. Sometimes, with new educators, I’ll stand at the edge of the group and just watch them teach. If they glance over nervously, I’ll give a small nod — a gesture that says, You’re doing fine. Keep going. It’s the same nod my mentors once gave me. A lineage of small, quiet affirmations — the passing of confidence from one body to another.
Artemis understands this kind of companionship better than anyone. On our walks, she doesn’t lead me or follow me. She walks with me, close enough that I can feel her presence, independent enough to have her own pace. There’s no need to talk. The shared rhythm is its own form of communication.
That’s what good mentorship feels like. Two people walking together, learning to listen to the same world.
In the galleries, that shared rhythm is what sustains me, the sense that we’re all in this practice together, learning how to see, how to slow down, how to care.
Standing beside is the quiet heart of museum education. It’s how we honor each other, how we pass on the craft, how we keep the work alive.
