Guru's Handbook

Your attention, like mine, is an exhaustible and limited resource. When I present to you a link to an article I think is worth reading, I am asking you to spend, on my recommendation, something you have only so much of.
I understand that you could spend your attention elsewhere. I thank you for [...]

Our first teachers are always our parents. As a teacher you may become aware, from time to time, and in some ways, that you take on the role of parent to your student. Just as one teacher-student pair is not like another, parent-child pairs vary sufficiently that most of the time you are [...]

In A Place to Rest I discussed how offering your student the belief that a solid understanding is possible can give them a needed confidence, a moment in which to gather themselves to again venture into the unknown.
Rory asks, “how do you teach certainty, solidity and answers when you have ceased to believe in them?”
There [...]

Teacher, do you have regular opportunity to have your non-teaching work examined?
It can be hard to hear a critique of your creations. Whether you dance or design machines or paint or write about physics, there is a sometimes uncomfortable moment when a person you respect looks at your work. In this moment we often [...]

Every step we have taken is part of our teaching. It is tempting to seek to redeem our failures by teaching our students to step past the rocks on which we cut our feet. To do what we could not do. To succeed where we stumbled.
But this does not work. Our students [...]