I don't teach subjects. I teach students. Family Law, or Conflict of Laws, or Sex-Based Discrimination provide the context within which I engage my students in the enterprise of becoming professional lawyers.

Law is endlessly fascinating because it is always changing. New cases raise new questions. Rules that appeared settled require reinterpretation to meet unexpected challenges. Law students must learn to accept uncertainty and to develop ways to anticipate and manage the unknown. They must learn, in short, to be independent thinkers and wise counselors capable of giving their clients clear options for making decisions.

Each student acquires intellectual self-reliance in an individual way. I try to facilitate this process. In doing so, I do not make lesson plans, nor do I develop goals for class sessions. Rather, I engage my students in a dialogue based on the material assigned for the class. The dialogue is spontaneous and unplanned, but it is not undirected. In a good class, the students help shape the direction of the dialogue by their insights and questions. Speaking, hearing, and responding are equally important.

Once, when a colleague was ill, I taught two sections of the same course during a single semester. The materials and assignments were identical, but the two classes were not alike. Starting from the same point, the dialogue in each section was shaped by varying emphases, characterized by disparate concerns, and focused on unique points. The words in the text were the same, but the music was different.

Not all students learn equally well from the same teacher. In particular, women students entering a male-dominated profession like law gain assurance from the presence of women teachers in the classroom. When I first began teaching at Berkeley in 1960, only a handful of my law students were women. Over the years, I have observed the comfort level of women students rise with the increasing number of women in the student body and the growing number of women on the faculty. I believe that a similar interaction occurs between students and faculty when both are members of underrepresented minority groups. Students learn from each other as well as from their teachers, and a diverse student body facilitates learning by all students. But the educational process seems to work better when students of color and women feel validated by the presence of teachers of color and women on the faculty.

Teaching is not about imparting information. Teaching is about giving students room to learn how to think for themselves.