The Five-Three-One of Teaching. ~E Reiss

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
– William Butler Yeats 
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11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.   ~Ephesians 4:11-16 (ESV)


Continuing our journey through the gift list of Ephesians, we hit upon the gift of Teacher. I'm splitting up "shepherds and teachers" even though in the greek they are the same word. Just my opinion, but I feel like there are SHEPHERD teachers... and there are shepherd TEACHERS if you get my drift.

I’m saving Evangelist for last, as that is the most terrifying gift (kidding here, we love you guys)… and perhaps the one I know the least about. Since the teaching gift is strongly part of my motivation and makeup, I remember very early on being extremely attentive to great teachers. I was intentionally looking for what they did well and what worked. So being a student has almost always been a multi-faceted activity for me; learning the material and honestly evaluating the effectiveness of the teacher in terms of process, style, execution and flow. Not in an armchair quarterback sense, but in the sense of a young athlete appreciating the game of the smarter, more seasoned veteran.

Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean I know anything, only that this is important to me and I have thoughts. Also, it doesn’t mean I’m a good teacher, only that I’m strongly motivated to become one… and I’m painfully aware that I haven’t arrived.

Let’s do this as: five, three, one. I’ll endeavor to list five things you may not know about teachers. I’ll give you three key principles about effective teaching, with examples. Then we’ll land on what I think may be one of the most important principles of success that I’ve ever encountered.

Five Delicious Facts about Teachers!

A) They will be excellent synthesizers of knowledge. They will tend to be talented learners, able to process a ridiculous amount of information quickly, and will be able to summarize or make understandable what they’ve learned to a layman.

B) They will love the process of learning. And they will have an high respect and value for the truth. Studying and preparing for a teaching session for this gift doesn’t often feel like work. Prep isn’t grindy, or a slog, but rather an exciting opportunity to learn something amazing and then share it in the context of larger modes of integrity and success in life. Teachers will actually look forward to studying something new. They will also be irritating in conversation, because they like to share what they've learned. Full of interesting and pedantic factoids for almost any situation.

C) They will see potential in students, that often students will not see in themselves. This can be a double-edged sword and a source of frustration if that potential is too often unrealized. Every great teacher / student / learning experience tapped into potential that was unseen by the students and brought a real sense of accomplishment and joy with unexpected success.

D) We can inspire Teachers to teach. They will thrive on positive feedback and results from their students… and they can get discouraged by enough apathy in context. Truly inspirational teachers become adept at pushing through this resistance and finding the right balance between (what may seem like) unrealistic expectations and building a crossable bridge. 

If you want to light a teacher up, be interested. Then, tell them how something they taught helped you made a positive, real difference in your life. 

E) Teachers will be most Effective teaching Heuristics, and not bound by Limited Specifics. A heuristic is a pattern of thought or learning that makes us more efficient. Instead of re-learning how to read every day, we have patterned and linguistic heuristics for handling language.

The best teachers will operate well in this space. They will teach readers to read, not just give them analysis of specific work. They will teach geometry as a mode of thinking, employing logical, step by step interactions to understand, solve and prove. They will teach curiosity of a certain sort, in good faith, forever impacting the journey of discovery for the rest of the student’s life.

In short, the very best Teachers, will teach us how to learn and engage, then turn us loose on the world.

Three Key Teaching Principles!

1) If the Teacher is Bored, the Student doesn’t have a Chance

I was privileged to take an entire class on Dante Alighieri in my undergrad degree. Day one, our marvelous professor mentioned that while many of us were familiar with Dante, at least in excerpts, we may not be aware of just how beautiful the language of the Commedia itself is.

He pulled out a leather tome and read to us a couple of pages from the Purgatorio, in Italian. None of us were fluent in Italian, but it didn't matter. Just the sounds of the words, were gorgeous. Flowing and perfect in their musicality, they fell on us like rain. If you remember the scene from The Shawshank Redemption where Andy plays Mozart over the prison sound system and time slows down as the prisoners were mesmerized by a moment of transcendental beauty… it was kind of like that. 

Then he said, "He did that for 1000 pages."

You could have heard a pen drop and in two minutes he had us. We’ll go wherever you want to go, we’ll prepare, and show up to class, and we will do whatever you want us to do. We were helpless before the beauty of Dante and a Teacher who wasn’t bored.


2) Teachers will Facilitate Learning and Discovery, the Mode / Style of this can Flex 

As a kid, I had an extraordinary opportunity, that started in the middle of losing a match in a Tae Kwon Do tournament. My opponent had done an elaborate kick (a jump roundhouse if interested) and it was so big and obnoxious and unnecessary that I was laughing a little internally. I leaned back just enough for the kick to miss and the tag on his foot pad dragged across the side of my neck. But he had missed and I suspect that because he was expecting “some” level of contact, he over-rotated just a bit and landed off balance. 

I stepped in to counter and he was bent over, hands down, with a neon sign saying, "hit me here". I started to turn into, what in the real world would have been a decisive end to conflict - and stopped. The gun had been loaded, cocked, aimed, and I just couldn't pull the trigger. It was the right call. This wasn’t life or death. It was a improv where the points were made up and don’t matter. So not throwing the punch didn’t leave anyone unprotected, or any meaningful outcome undone. And it's an unwritten rule to not take advantage in this context. It would be something of a cheap shot in the world of point fighting.

Still, it is odd to have a goal of say, "out spar your opponent", have a great opportunity to do that, and then leave it aside for stupid and unsatisfying ethical concerns.

The referees stopped the bout and then, in a surprise move, awarded my opponent two points for a head shot that didn’t land while the audience loudly groaned. It was a bad call, and I was, confused. This guy just got rewarded for being ridiculous and me NOT knocking him out.

Taking a deep breath, I glanced around the room, not reacting, letting it go, refocusing. I remember it being an odd visual moment. The sea of people around the room, were together a gargantuan multi-pointal blur, a collective of tiny individual waves of motion. They ebbed and flowed, they walked and cheered for the other matches, they pointed and clapped, or lightly touched a family member sitting nearby.

Across the room, in stark relief to the hundreds (maybe thousands) of people around the taped rings of the tournament stood a single man. And he was standing perfectly still. I mean the absolute stillness of a predator in complete focus, coiled to pounce, but not yet... he was as motionless as a statue. The contrast of his very stillness separated him from the gentle visual motion of the room and he caught my eye and attention. I recognized him, even from 100 feet away.

"He" was Jack Hwang, an eighth degree black belt, and head over all of the schools attending the tournament. All of our belt tests were done in his presence and he was all the things: scary, formidable, emanating gravitas, while speaking only when absolutely necessary. In his 70's he moved with the grace and balance of a panther. He was the very model of a modern major martial art master… and noticing him, I saw that he had noticed me.

To understand this moment, you need to know that there is an unusual thing that next level martial artists can do. They can communicate with a single look that somehow bears psychic force and complicated expression. If a picture paints 1000 words, these guys can write you a book. He slightly lifted his head as if to ask something like, “do you see me?” and I lifted my head almost imperceptibly in response. 

Then it happened.

He fixed me with his gaze from across the room. This indicated something important and my attention raised a notch.

Then he nodded in respect.

Not a bow exactly, but his meaning was clear. He had seen the entire interaction. The missed kick, the over-rotation, my step in… and the punch I didn’t throw. He saw it all and was giving me the Kung Fu Master version of a sticker, or a really nice gold star. That moment is burned in my memory… and even though there were dozens of people around my match, no one but Master Hwang saw it.  The judges didn’t see it, my opponent sure didn’t see it… even the people groaning didn’t see it. They just saw the bad call from the missed kick - not my response (or lack of response).  

I lost the match and I didn’t care. I was grinning like an idiot. Master Hwang had given me a nod. I was doing OK.

About a week later I got the call for an invite only class with other brown belts with Master Hwang himself. It was one of the most fruitful learning experiences of my life. The other 6 students in the class were the very best students from all of his schools, about to test for black belt. They were the next generation of leaders, future teachers and leaders of schools of their own. I was honored to be a part of this elite group, though honestly I was the weakest and slowest one of the lot.

We would do a short warm-up, then we would sit and he would explain the “why” behind simple techniques: stances, punches, kicks. "This" was intended for balance, "this" for motion, "this" for response, "this" for defensive position. You have to understand… the “mode” of martial art teaching is not conversation. It is very much imitation and correction. 

Do “this” and the teacher demonstrates, throwing a punch or a kick or a block. You attempt and they correct - sometimes by physically moving your hands or feet into the right position. There might be some commentary but it’s mostly, “good”, or “again”, or “no, like this”. Yet here we were getting the philosophy of martial art and digging into the why. Sitting quietly, Master Hwang gently upgraded all of us. And it was amazing. My actual physical technique became cleaner, wildly better; my sparring became sharper and more focused. And perhaps above all, I took a note from a truly great teacher.

He used words to teach us about physicality. He used simplicity to lead us to excellence in complexity. He corrected misapprehension in common technique and application and he fixed us all with that piercing, all too perceptive gaze.

He was a great teacher, and I’ll never forget that my successful interview for that amazing class - was the punch I didn’t throw.


3) Truly Effective Teaching will be best Paired with Action.

I was having dinner in Atlanta with a Teacher friend of mine and we were all alone in the restaurant. The waitress, in the course of taking care of us, was clearly in distress. It was just us, so at some point we asked her if she was OK.

And she just melted.

It turns out that she had buried her father the week before and was still reeling in grief. Her mom was a full blown alcoholic, so she had to make all of the arrangements herself. She was going to school full time and taking care of her 17 year old sister, while also working full time to make ends meet. She was burnt and overwhelmed and doing the best she could.

She said that the hardest thing was that she was very close to her dad, she told him everything. A few days before, she had picked up the phone to call him but then... she remembered. Holy cats. She took us all into the moment where you think to connect with someone and realize that you don't get to do that anymore.

By the way, she was 19 years old.

We tried to be kind and offer some encouragement, and of course we left her a big tip.

But my friend couldn’t get away from the thought of this girl and what he might do to help. He consulted with his wife and the next day we stopped back into the restaurant. He popped in, then back out. I asked my friend what he had happened and he told me.

He gave her a few hundred bucks to help out.

He also gave her his number and told her, the next time she wanted to pick up the phone to call her dad, to call him instead. He would love to hear about her day, or listen to the latest news, or commiserate with a life that can sometimes be a little rough. He said, “I’m no replacement, but I have daughters, and if you need someone for a while, I’ll be your dad.”

She asked him about the money and said she would pay him back, but he said don’t worry about it - because that’s what your dad would do. There is a passage from the handbook of ethical supergenuises that talks about "standing in the gap". The idea being to run some positive interference, to create some margin, and maybe to help someone who may need it.

Now, we wouldn’t often consider this kind of perception, empathy, and generosity to be "teaching", but I think sometimes these moments can be instruction in its highest form. He was teaching her that God still had her back. That hope wasn't dead quite yet. He was teaching her not to give up, because sometimes a stranger can offer a tiny slice of kindness that can fill up the whole world.

And he was teaching me that sometimes if we have the power to do something good, we should go ahead and do that.

And the One, Perhaps the Most Important Lesson of All:

- Teachers Help us Adopt a Lifelong Learning Stance.

Teaching is the door that opens all other doors. It is the foundational profession that equips and trains all the other professions. It was one of the primary roles that Jesus chose for His expression in the earth, and He is literally called “Teacher” in the how to flourish supergenius manual, dozens of times.

We all don’t have to have nerd-like proclivities, and egg-shaped scholarly heads to be fully human. But here Paul teaches us that Teacher is an equipping gift, not just a transmission gift. They equip us to be curious, to learn, to discover, to think clearly and to move forward in helpful and engaging ways. When we are at our best, we’re encountering new things and pressing into what’s next.

It isn’t that teaching is important and that Teachers should be highly honored, though it is and they should.

It is that deep meaningful, spiritual learning is critical for us along the way… and Teachers help us see this journey all the more clearly.