Thursday, June 20, 2013

The hardest part of teaching

Crash is home from WJU, thoroughly soaked in Greek.  He's adding to his cooking repertoire in return for tutoring me in Greek, this week learning to stretch the dough for my thin crust pizza.  (My crust is surely not as thin as Stratoz' or my great-grandmother's strudel, you can't quite read the paper through it!)

As we put together the pizzas, I kept wanting to show (do!) rather than coach.  I would hand the spoon back, or give him back the grated parmesan cheese or...until finally Crash popped out with, "The hardest part of teaching is letting someone else do the fun part."

Yep.  My respect for my parents grows ever deeper.


My general chemistry students aren't likely to believe that I actually enjoy working out a hard problem, and it's hard to coach them through it instead of just indulging in the doing myself.  But it's true.

6 comments:

  1. Oh, this is good.

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  2. The Boy Scouts use the EDGE method - Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable. Works well - if you can keep your own hands off during the Guide and Enable phases. :-)

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  3. It's such a joy to hear about your relationship with your boys and spouse! Your joy in them rings through your writing.

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  4. Great insight and I totally agree. I get so excited by a new Chemistry exam from the state - 85 Chemistry puzzles, free of charge!

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  5. I may be teaching someone how to work with glass. I will try to remember to let them have fun. I also need to pass on strudel to someone.

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