ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, in a preservice education course, I decided to test out a colleague’s suggestion that a surefire way to prompt students to engage with questions of the nature of pedagogy is to have them choose and discuss personally compelling synonyms for the word teaching. Using a thesaurus, I prepared a list that included caring, conditioning, disciplining, educating, emancipating, empowering, enlightening, facilitating, guiding, indoctrinating, inducting, instructing, lecturing, managing, mentoring, modeling, nurturing, pointing, structuring, telling, and training, among others.
