My wife and I watched Star Wars The Last Jedi for the second time this weekend.  In it, Luke and Yoda have a wonderful exchange about teaching that stuck in my head. Luke is hesitant to take on Rey as a student, afraid that she will turn out as Ben Solo did, being drawn to the dark side. To which Yoda replies with an instant classic response:

Heeded my words not, did you? Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.

There are two parts of this I love.

The first part is the line about failure. As a culture, we’ve started to embrace the idea that failure can be the best teacher. A simple search for quotes about failure will return all kinds of results suggesting that failure is what leads to success. So, the idea that failure is a great teacher is not novel.

However, nearly everything we teach about failure is that you must try and fail in order to learn. And while this is certainly a great way to learn, if this were all we did, we wouldn’t make any progress as a species. What helps us move forward from generation to generation is not that we continually learn from our own mistakes, but that we are able to learn from other’s mistakes. And, in order to learn from other’s mistakes, those mistakes and failures must be shared and taught.

This ups the expectations around failure. Learning to admit your own mistakes is a big step in maturing for a lot of people. It’s not always easy to say “I was wrong”, even just to yourself. But Yoda is telling Luke that even that isn’t enough. Not only do you need to admit your mistakes to yourself and the people around you, but you have to actively share and teach your failures to others. Shout your failures from the mountain top so no one else needs to make those mistakes again. That takes a whole new level of confidence and self-assuredness to do, and can be the differentiator between a good teacher and a great one.

The second part of Yoda’s quote that I like is, “we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.” It’s classic Yoda, saying words out of order, and somehow having that give them more meaning. “We are what they grow beyond” is a definition of the teacher, but it’s a definition that’s dependent on the students actions. The teacher, ultimately, will be defined by what his or her students go on to achieve. Moreover, the quote seems to suggest that the students will necessarily grow beyond their teachers, achieving things the teacher never has or will.

It’s the kind of quote that can give you a sense of urgency if you are teaching. On the one hand, you know that your legacy as a teacher is what your students will go on to achieve. This motivates you to teach them well and set them on the right path. On the other hand, it also suggests that whatever you are able to achieve, your students will grow beyond it. This motivates you to keep growing and learning, in a sense forcing the baseline for your students up as you improve and pass on your skills and knowledge.

I think the best teachers I ever had embodied these values. They not only learned from their own failures, but weren’t afraid to share those failures so their students could avoid making those mistakes. They also taught with a sense of urgency, taking a deep interest in their students and ensuring they absorbed the lessons being taught. And lastly, they were continually learning and growing themselves, ensuring that their students would grow beyond what they were capable of. These are values that we can all learn from and attempt to embody in our own lives. After all, we are all teachers.