Dictionary

unteacher en · NOUN

Etymology

From un- + teacher.

Meanings

1. (derogatory) A popular teacher who focuses on fun activities but lacks pedagogical rigor.
   • “Dawson the Doubter,” he calls himself; by this epithet we understand he takes pride in being known — that is a very good quality for an Un'''teacher, scarcely a recommendation for a teacher . 1856, The Lamps of the Temple, page 452:
   • If you decide to wrestle with an unteacher, consider his or her political power base. 2005, Autumn Tooms Cyprès, The Rookie's Playbook: Insights and Dirt for New Principals, page 73:
   • Artful teachers, in the pay of this unteacher, may do a great deal of mischief to the rising generation. 1969, The Poor Man's Guardian, page 52:
   • John's unteachers ignore the letter of their target text, while fetishizing the letter of their own. 1998, Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism, page 48:
2. Someone who helps others unlearn or overcome unhealthy social conditioning.
   • Plus there are scores of people like us (The Minimalists) -- people who've rejected the system and aligned their lives with their values and beliefs-- who function not as teachers, but as unteachers, helping people unlearn the bullshit 2015, Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus, Essential: Essays by The Minimalists:
   • An un-teacher, hopefully—and it is a difficult task that I embark upon, playfully— an un-teacher, hopefully, lets you lead yourselves toward the freedom of your being. 2006, Susan M. Watkins, Conversations With Seth:
   • But I love my unteachers — the feminist thinkers and writers and talkers and poets and artists and singers and critics and friends, from Wollstonecraft and Woolf through the furies and glories of the seventies and eighties […] 1995, Corinna S. Hasbach, The House that Feminist Imagination Builds:
3. One who guides students in self-directed learning, a teacher involved in unschooling.
   • To be an unteacher requires patience; not everyone will be willing to listen, but an unteacher does not need to convince anyone. 2017, Stephanie Leon Neal, The Untraining of a Sea Priestess:
   • I call myself an unteacher. When you do well in my class you get a balloon that reads, " From your unteacher for being a good unstudent." 1983, Rex Gamble, Believe in Yourself, page 107:
   • I had become the unteacher. My students were students of themselves; the real teacher was the painting process. 1996, Michele Cassou, Stewart Cubley, Life, Paint and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous:

Forms