Mental Gymnastics

Teachers as Precursors of Knowledge

My induction to the teaching profession began as early as childhood. I was 8 and my students (siblings) were 5 and 3 at the time. I created workbooks for them. I remember taking into account their age while preparing the exercises. I actaully had more fun writing a 10 page workbook filled with writing and drawing exercises than doing the lecture. Every Saturday during high school, I taught scouting skills like knot-tying, making trail signs, fire-building and tent pitching. I did a lot of peer tutoring in college. My classmates often tricked me into it saying that I'm actually just reviewing as I go about tutoring them. At work, I've held trainings and developed knowledge transfer methods in our process. I often get assigned to something that no one else knows about and later, I'm supposed to share that knowledge with the rest of the team. Right now, I'm actually preparing myself to take teaching as a profession seriously.

So it's no wonder that I find myself trottling back to the world of the academe. I find relief in sharing my ideas on the books that I've read, excitement in discussing views on the nature of things and interest in expounding on observations with culture. Unfortuantely, most people would rather just talk about other people. And that's when I just shut up.

posted by kquill @ 11:39 AM