Creating a motto for teachers

Question

I am a doctoral candidate in education and one of the theorists for my work is Parker Palmer, an American educator. In his book, The Courage to Teach, he said something I thought perfect for my research and which I was hoping to use as an informal motto for us in the International Studies in Education program at the University of Iceland. The phrase is:

"We teach who we are."

The author referred to this by saying, "Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one´s inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. [Thus,] [g]ood teaching requires self-knowledge: it is a secret hidden in plain sight."

Could someone help me in creating a viable Latin translation? Thank you very much!

Answer 1

"We teach what we are" seems closer to your intended meaning. Here is one way of rendering that in Latin:

Quod docemus sumus.

Or, perhaps:

Quod sumus docemus.

Answer 2

This is actually a bit difficult to translate into Latin, in part because the English isn't what one might call 'grammatically rigorous'.

A literal translation like qui sumus docemus would mean 'we, who are, teach'.

The other answer is on the right track: quod sumus docemus can mean 'what we are, we teach' in the sense that what makes us up is what we teach. But I don't think it's quite there.

I'd suggest ut sumus, sic docemus 'as we are, so do we teach'.

Small Update:

A more mellifluous word order might be sicut sumus docemus, which could also be arranged as docemus sicut sumus.