Guru's Handbook

You will give all that you can but it is the student who truly decides

When my student took her own life, I shared the shock of her friends and family. I grieved. I had all the reactions that are common to survivors of suicide, including sorrow and guilt and anger.

I thought back [...]

You may be all that stands between a student and the darkness Be humble in your power Be ruthless in your support

There may be times when you are the one thing keeping a student from the darkness. Whether the darkness is despair or the door to death, you may be the rope that [...]

But you use words so well Surely they say exactly what you mean them to

There is a lot to say about remote teaching. The essence is this: when you are physically present with your student, you have the subtle cues that body language and breath and eye movement and tone of voice allow, [...]

Nothing destroys communication as effectively as simple words misunderstood

Even among native speakers, few come to spoken fluency by reading the same books or listening to the same speakers. It is inevitable that we understand even our shared language in subtly different ways.

And yet words create meaning and meaning creates reaction.

When another’s [...]

All moments bring lessons Sometimes your presence is enough

Every moment’s happenings, however ordinary or extreme, can be turned into what are called “teachable moments”. As you teach more deeply, you will see how to apply almost anything to the lesson at hand. You will see in each moment, each passing cloud, every one [...]

Not all students choose you freely nor do you choose them A captive resists teach them to choose

Every culture makes a distinction between children and adults. Though this line is sometimes hard to draw, every culture establishes a way to do so. The distinction serves an essential purpose: to distinguish between those who [...]

Whatever you teach your student will pass on something else

You are not handing your students knowledge, but rather making a path of understanding for them to walk. It is inevitable that they will fail to step where you tell them to and step in places you never stepped.

Whatever it is you are [...]

My thanks to Rory at http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/, who writes:

Could you address the situation of long-term friends or significant others who wish to study with you?

This is not the same situation that I discussed in A Student’s Affection, where you have in place a teacher-student relationship to maintain, as your primary obligation. With a [...]