Guru's Handbook

There are many ways to address student challenge, depending on the student, the study, the situation. As I wrote in When the Student Fights Back, the first thing to do is to seek your own calm. If the student is in motion, angry or lashing out, you are best off balancing them with a [...]

Given sufficient time and depth, your favorite student will fight you, your teaching, or both. The more aligned you have been, the more affection you have for the student, the deeper the work has been, the harder this may hit you.

It may seem important to resolve this quickly, but a quick resolution may [...]

As a teacher, you have two kinds of flaws: the ones you see and the ones you do not see.

Every hidden flaw will constrain your teaching. It is a blind spot that you cannot teach around, cannot teach through, cannot address, cannot use.

We are, often, barely conscious of our flaws. We may [...]

As a teacher you have influence from your very first moment. When you walk onto the stage of teaching you can direct the attention of your students, whether because the students are shepherded into a room where you stand at the front or by the syllabus containing your name next to the word “instructor.” [...]

In Pain and Damage I discussed how important it is to be able to see pain in your student as a potential warning of damage to come. I discouraged teachers from deliberately causing or allowing damage, because damaging a student is very complicated and highly vulnerable to abuse and mistake. I was then questioned [...]