The famed UCLA basketball coach, the late John Wooden, once told a reporter who asked that the key to good leadership (i.e., having influence) is to be a good listener. Teachers who desire to have long-term influence in the lives of their students and their student’s families (i.e., younger siblings, friends and family, etc.) are good listeners, proactive communicators, and gracious encouragers. They are leaders because they know the difference between teaching students and teaching …
Category: On Teaching
Not everyone is obliged to excel in philosophy, medicine, or the law, nor are all equally favored by nature; but all are destined to live in society and to practice virtue. —Vittorino da Feltre (1378 – 1446) …
The public interest in the individual’s life and learning is not that of a prospective employer or bureaucrat. Although, the individual must live in harmony with the community, his life of virtue ought not to be subsumed by the political purposes of the state—for ultimately, the state’s only justification is that it makes the good life, the life of virtue, the life that takes responsibility for what it knows, possible… Reacting to “missle gaps” and …
Annie Sullivan was a classical educator who began teaching Helen Keller when Keller was only six years old. Sullivan used fingerspelling, a tedious method of tracing out every letter of every word in the palm of Keller’s hand. By the time Keller was 13, she could read Latin and French using raised print. In high school, she read the Iliad—in Greek. As you’re likely aware, Keller was blind, deaf, and dumb, and had been since …
There is one sense in which the teacher should be predictable: well-prepared lesson plans, punctuality, grading standards, cheerfulness, orderly classroom, etc. But there is another sense in which a teacher should be equally unpredictable: timely appropriate humor, relevant rabbit trails, impactful stories, and impromptu displays of beauty: art, music, and poetry. A surprising piece of art, a beautiful poem or even a clichéd joke about polynomials (Rats FOILED again!) might be the inspiration, wonder, or …
In order for a sixteen-year-old to propel approximately 1 ton of machinery down the highway at 60-plus miles per hour (often with siblings and friends as passengers), he or she need only spend about 30 hours in combined classroom and hands-on instruction. In order for anyone of reasonable age to legally and readily acquire gasoline, a most spectacularly explosive liquid capable of incinerating people, buildings, or cars, one need absolutely no training, certification, or diploma—just …