Teaching...

I'm teaching a class, something that I don't often do, and have been discovering interesting differences (duh!!) between a one-hour talk and a 1.5hr lecture. A recent article on Slate excerpts a new book by Eric Liu called 'Guiding Lights', about teachers in different walks of life, and how they hone their craft. One quote from the article was interesting:

Like any good teacher, Bryan is a master of misdirection: working on a fastball to improve a change-up, using dry work without a ball to sharpen performance with a ball, and talking about how to keep a quiet head when, in fact, we were talking about how to keep a quiet mind.

It's an interesting way of describing the work a teacher does. A review from Publisher's Weekly at the Amazon.com page talks of other techniques, like

receiving before transmitting—that is, tuning in to the student's unique qualities and motivations; unblocking and unlocking—helping students overcome their inner obstacles; and zooming in and out—breaking the subject down and then connecting it other matters.

I'm curious to know what the full-time teachers think of this...