Friday, March 5, 2021

Coaching Wisdom in the Trenches

The two paramount priorities of education should be kindess and inspiration.

We can talk all day about teaching methods and their efficacy (and there are gobs of good ones), but those are supplements.

I enjoy an advanced discussion as much as the next nerd, but, when it comes to coaching, I like being in the trenches.

In my tutoring experience, I have loved the challenge of trying to change people's minds about subjects I love.

Think about your field. If you love it, you want more people to love it. Of course you do. So, we should teach to clone our love. We should love the learners. Everything else flows from these two principles. We want the learners to stay connected to our subjets long after they have ceased accepting our services. It does less good to focus primarily on the immediate. Our goal is to maximize their potential, and, as we all know, that means delayed payoff sometimes.

For example, I've been studying music formally since 2003 and I feel like I am only just now beginning to round out. My music teachers best accomplished the payoff of avoiding harm. This is to say that I feel like I might have learned more if I had been more motivated to practice. Still, my teachers never made me feel like I wasn't good enough ... that I couldn't learn. Hence, to this day, I keep getting incrementally better. Michael Tate is a near-master's graduate in Adult Learning and Leadership. He directs a men's barbershop harmony chorus.