The art of teaching

Helping a student build confidence with a topic starts with creating a supportive and non-judgmental learning environment. Learning is much easier when as a student, you are genuinely enjoying the process. This is hard to do in the overly common cases of your instructor being condescending, screaming at you, or making belittling remarks.

Are you a good teacher? In moments of high stress, are you able to take a breath and keep the student feeling confident? I don’t think many people are naturally great at this, but we are able to get much better through learning how to be patient with our students. This patience feels related to the beauty of rhetoric. Being convincing to the student that they can make progress, and that they are not the issue in the moment.