The Journey of the Teacher in Avatar the Last Airbender.
If you don’t love Avatar the Last Airbender, you just haven’t seen it yet. Watch the entire series and fall in love with everything the masterpiece has to offer.
[Hot take: Legend of Korra is worth watching. It’s overall a great expansion on the lore and it has its moments [[Avatar Won, Zaheer]] even as it’s not the flawless show AtLA is.]
Part of what makes this series so great is that every teacher has a strong character trait of also learning.
The clearest example is Sokka and Master Piandao, simply because the redundant theme is collapsed into a single episode. Master Piandao adopts from Sokka, even as he is the master. Rather than being dismissive, he praises and sees the advantage to Sokka’s unique way of thinking and approach. This is in sharp contrast to the attitude of the butler, who is contemptuous of Sokka and derides his ideas as part of his prejudice against Sokka’s class.
But most teachers in the series also have masterful story arcs related to both teaching and learning.
Their relationship with being a student speaks to their mastery of the very skill of learning.
The waterbending master Pakko is one of the first to showcase this, entwined against Katara’s story. Katara is Aang’s first water bending teacher, even though she is scant more than a student herself. Every older water bender in her village at the South Pole is either dead or captured. She has a long journey of being Aang’s mentor and seifu, but also learning bending herself [the stolen bending scroll, Pakko, healing, bloodbending].
Master Pakko is a stubborn old man who has Katara [and Gram-gram] show him a valuable lesson on strength and determination of women. He learns from Katara’s spirit and Gram-gram’s necklace making him a better person. The show implies some level of reconciliation between the two tribes with the Pakko traveling south and the change in his attitude while with the White Lotus Order.
This theme is consistently apparent. While Toph is the Greatest Earth bender in the world, she learns metal bending. King Bumi cannot be Aang’s master because he understands what he still has to learn. To wait and listen.
The opposite of this is Lieutenant Zhao, who confronts his old teacher, but fails to learn anything and is subsequently dispatched.
Iroh and his relationship with tea is most subtle and extended arc of “Masters-learning-new-things”.
Iroh, by design and by implication, is the wisest, greatest, and deepest of teachers. Thus he is paired with the student that has the furthest to learn, Zuko [Notable, he also provides wise and great guidance to most members of the GAang, from Toph on the road to Aang in the caves.]
His age, his history, his persona, all speak to a wise, multifaceted master. From Pa Sho, to Military leadership, to emotional support, to music and singing, to history, to fire and lightning bending, to poetry; Iroh is a wise old man.
But it’s his continued and evolving relationship with Tea emphasizes that no one is born a master. They learn. They make mistakes. They grow.
Iroh penchant for tea is well known, but from the beginning he is shown as a tea hobbyist. He’s a guest at many tea shops and tables. He often brews and offers tea to compatriots and strangers. He’s even mocked by other Fire Nation citizens as a senile, weak old man. However, the journey as a refugee through Ba Sing Se gives him an opportunity to become a tea master and tea shop owner.
Note the show makes great use of levity by having him drink and suffer from the mistakes of boiling the white jade bush, mistaking it for the white dragon bush. And then nearly continuing the folly with the unknown berries before Zuko wisely throws them aside. This emphasizes that while Iroh loves and respects tea, he also isn’t flawless; he learns from his mistakes.
He also noticeably starts as a mere employee in a middling tea house, a step up from being a refugee. It’s not nepotism or privilege that gains him the ownership of his own shop, but his skills being poached by the Upper Ring folk.
Iroh is never arrogant. The best teachers are very humble, allowing them to learn from anyone about anything. The wisest teachers never stop being students.
Iroh exemplifies this by never being afraid of making mistakes and always reaching for authentic interests, regardless of the stigma and is one my favorite characters in Avatar.
This whole post only exemplifies one small nuance I picked up in my repeated watching. The entirety of the cast, music, arc, and world building is all worth seeing and paying attention too. It’s filled with heart and excellent story telling so I can’t recommend Avatar the Last Airbender enough.