Mentors

Daily writing prompt

What makes a teacher great?

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I’m one of those people who don’t do well with didactic instruction. Personally, I don’t find it useful. Pointing a shotgun, or other firearm, at my head, and telling me to bear down and study doesn’t cut it.

I had that with the Sisters of Perpetual Pain as a kid, and all it did was get me held back in school. No, the thunder and lightning school of tuition just makes me belligerent. I suspect that many others fall into that group as well.

I did, and continue to do well with mentoring—the type of teacher who finds ways to lead you into learning. After leaving the Sisters, I was lucky enough to have several public school teachers who mentored me. They made me want to bear down and study, and inspired me to learn more. Was it challenging? Of course. But when I needed it, support was there. These teachers were also smart enough to know when to take the “training wheels” off. As I became confident in teaching myself, I didn’t need them.

At college, I was also lucky enough to have many professors who knew how to infect the students with a sense of wonder and a desire to explore.

Having had models like those, it was no wonder that when I taught, I unconsciously adopted the models I thrived with. Over the years, I’ve taught anthropology at a college level, marine woodcarving to adults at the WoodenBoat School, and television and media arts to seventh and eighth graders. It’s not all the same, but the concept of leading people into learning, rather than driving them to it, remains the same.