learning – three good words

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025

Attention, please

What makes a teacher great?

Teaching is like stand-up, except the audience can’t leave.

A good teacher listens to what is not being said.

A good teacher is a tour guide to the world, with niche interests.

A good teacher knows their subject so well, they can admit to their own ignorance.

A good teacher remembers their students are young humans growing, learning, developing.

A good teacher understands that being liked and being respected are two different things. And that liked and respected often overlap in the best of them.

#monday

April 11, 2025April 11, 2025

Story Time

Describe something you learned in high school.

We had fantastic history teachers who taught pattern recognition and insisted on historical context.

They were big on Nothing is inevitable and Look at who’s telling the story.

One history teacher especially was all about Double-check your sources because liars be lying.

They took their time to show us how oftentimes the biggest lies are the ones that make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Basically, if something felt like the perfect explanation with zero nuance, then someone was selling a story for some kind of profit. They set up exercises so we could find the story, identify the profit, and figure out the nuance.

Rather than tell, they showed us the complexity of human experience. And, they made us think, even when we didn’t want to. They made us sit in our discomfort. And gave us room to argue our points, especially if we argued well. That didn’t mean they agreed. They expected us to take the heat if we were already trying to prove them wrong.

Were they perfect? No. They had their foibles. But they were genuine educators who were passionate about their subject and were given the space to actually teach it. Which is how we got a capital E Education, and yes, I am grateful.

Makes The Horrors pretty horrible, though, ngl…

#timelines

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015

alma mater

strange to retrace
the steps you once took
eagerly expecting an eduction
and getting more, way more
than you first expected

not just the books bought
and the papers written
but the friends and heartbreak
the clandestine lovers
breaking up in furious tears and shouting
once discussed and inevitably discovered
yes, you two, I know who you are…

the novelties found
the loyalties broken
the real friends made
those many words said
and unspoken
in between and all around
the hours sitting, pouring, agonizing
studying, practicing, memorising
and finally, finally, understanding
all those things you’ll actually
– I guarantee you –
really need later on
in the big bad rest of the world
with its sharp fangs and cold snout

that wide open place where suddenly
being clueless is a country of its own
which you have a permanent visa for
coz it doesn’t get better, does it?
oh no, it gets so much more
like an effing sitcom

where time and again
you’re made to understand
the connection between bat excrement (urgh)
and fucking crazy, excuse my French
(why French anyway?)

and you know youth is not wasted on the young
it’s exactly what’s needed to get through it all
and not end up neurotic, eccentric,
not to mention unnecessarily high strung

oh, wait…
naw, it’s all good
it’s the simple fact that
now, years later
you’re no longer either one
or the other
you’re who you are:
still a kid and genuinely grown up.