A friend of mine, Sally, works at big school where there are many teachers. She likes to walk along the corridor of the school and look through the little windows of the classroom doors to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.
One day, she was walking along the corridor and she looked into one of the classrooms and saw John. John was standing at the front of the class teaching. He was gesturing and talking and turning to write on the blackboard, and it looked like a very dynamic class.
Sally looked a little further into the classroom and got a big surprise. There were no students sitting in the classroom at all. In fact, it appeared that John was teaching to a completely empty room.
Naturally, Sally felt a little worried about John and wondered if he was okay. So she gently knocked on the door of the classroom. John looked around with a surprised look on his face and came to the door.
“Excuse me, John”, said Sally. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sally, I’m teaching now – please don’t disturb me. We can talk later.”
“But John, there are no students.”
John looked surprised and said, “well that’s got nothing to do with me. I am paid to teach and so I teach.”
Sally knows her head but didn’t really understand. In Sally’s mind, teaching involved students actually learning. For John, teaching obviously meant something else.