Mirror mirror on the wall—who's the best teacher of them all?

I just finished The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. One idea Palmer borrowed from Jane Tompkin's "Pedagogy of the Distressed" spoke to me like a truth-telling magic mirror.
Apparently Tompkin's obsession as a teacher had not been helping students learn what they wanted/ needed to know but rather with:
"(a) showing the students how smart I was
(b) showing them how knowledgeable I was; and
(c) showing them how well-prepared I was for class.
I had been putting on a performance whose true goal was not to help the students learn but to act in such a way that they would have a good opinion of me…How did it come to be that our main goal as academicians turned out to be performance?...[Tompkin's later answer is fear]…Fear of being shown up for what you are: a fraud, stupid, ignorant, a clod, a dolt, a sap, a weakling, someone who can't cut the mustard."

Holla sister! Can I get an AMEN? This fear of appearing to not know everything about the English language is a serious snag in my self and my teaching. If I work so hard to make my "on-stage performance" slick and smooth, I am actually teaching my kids to act slick and smooth.
Whoops! I would rather they be more accepting of rough edges, developing unclear ideas, and mucking around in uncertainty. If that is what I want I need to model it right? This goes along with modeling my thinking process for them:
"the first time I tried this I really struggled, but after a few tries it becomes easier,"
"the photocopier isn't working, so we are moving to plan B,"
"I can't find my dongle."
I shouldn't gag on it so hard when I choke out the occasional: "I...don't..uh.. know (yet)." I'm still not totally comfortable with this idea, but I'm starting to think the Best Teacher of All is not necessarily the one with all her i's dotted and t's crossed.