Guru's Handbook

When you teach, be like an orange: though your skin may be bitter and the treasures inside laborious to gain, let your inner teachings be sweet, nutritious and full of seeds.
Analogies are useful tools, but remember that the map is not the territory, and the analogy is not what you are teaching.
I chose “orange” at [...]

Steer a careful course between faith and doubt
Your student needs both to learn
Gaining your student’s faith in you as teacher is important, but their belief in the infalability of your knowledge can limit them. Walking a conscious line between these two as you teach allows the student to doubt, and doubt allows the student [...]

You will never be
who your student thinks you are.
This is fine
Your students will have a vision of you. Big, small, shiny or dull, when you glimpse this image through their eyes you may realize that this is not how you see yourself.
That’s perfectly all right.
Your student’s image of who you are is irrelevant to [...]

Sometimes it’s better to intentionally hit the nail
at a slight angle
and let the student hit it true

At some moment you’ll look at your student’s work and see just what the student needs to do to correct a small error. You’ll show them how to hit a particular nail straight into the wood, and then [...]

What are you teaching?
Are you sure?
You are always teaching more than one thing at a time, whether you intend to or not.
At very least, you are teaching what it is to be a teacher, what it is to teach. Your student will some day teach someone, somewhere, and they will use you as an [...]

I watched a class taught by a teacher with many more years’ experience and better credentials. I could see deep flaws in his teaching. In each student’s movements, I saw the weaknesses of the teacher reflected back.
If you teach long enough, you will see others teach and their flaws will be obvious to [...]

Try this: put aside the lesson plan, just for today, and ask your students what they want to learn.
Not only is this good practice for the student who ultimately must be responsible for learning and for choosing what to learn, but it is useful for you to see what happens when you toss the navigation [...]