Are WE, MIS, teachers?

[Uncle Al]

Food for thought: Has anyone told YOU what to look for

Are We Teachers JPG 2022-11-26.jpg

Uncle Al

[crfriend]

Food for thought: Has anyone told YOU what to look for

Plenty of times, and most of the time it's been wrong. Vastly better is to show someone where to look for something rather than telling them what to look for. It's like the old allegory of "Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a moment. Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Wisdom is acquired, not purveyed.

[STEVIE]

Me, hell yes!
Not all just about men in skirts either.
Good teachers make others open their eyes and see all the possibilities.
Carl, I particularly like the wisdom quote.
BTW all teachers are educators, but all educators are not teachers, far from it.
Steve.

[crfriend]

Good teachers make others open their eyes and see all the possibilities.
Carl, I particularly like the wisdom quote.

My personal style when I'm trying to teach or, better, mentor someone, is to gently guide them into the vicinity of where the solution is and allow them to find it. I've done this time and again, and it's paid dividends. Giving someone the answer teaches them precisely nothing; gentle guidance and patient prodding produce the desired results because the "padawan" needs to learn "the hard way" else the lesson will not stick. And this is not just for dealing with kids, either. I've used the tactic in dealing with my seniors who were faced with knotty computer problems.

I also have a sneaking suspicion as to whom I picked this up from, and it dates to decades ago. Sadly, he passed away in the late 1990s unbeknownst to me until I helped out with a computer-rescue mission in Cambridge, MA where he had wound up and learnt the bad news then. It shook me badly -- so badly, in fact, that when I got home I was ashen and shaking and my late ex- immediately noticed and asked, "What happened?" I told her the story, and produced an artefact from my pocket that the owners of the place had given to me -- a piece of paper dating to 1982, in my hand, using a dead alphabet (Runes) that I'd been playing with at the time, and that this guy had kept front-and-centre on his cork-board for all the intervening years. To say that was humbling would be an understatement; it shook me to the core.

I never got a chance to shake his hand and say, "Thank you for what you taught me."