thinking about good teaching

in the past week:

Joseph, the tour guide, took a small group up Diamond Head Crater last Friday morning. I still remember the history he demonstrated with small stones and a chalk line, the geology he illustrated with a fence and the evolution he showed us with a square drawn in the sand. we were among the 25% of his groups who didn't question why the finches in Hawaii have so many different kinds of beaks. he didn't say anything about our lack of curiosity, but later took up the lesson where he'd left off, with the answer coming from a different direction.

(the next tour guide said it's always hard for him to follow Joseph, and he was right - I don't remember much of what the second one said!).

today, a colleague. I went to four 3-hour lectures in the last 2 days and, while all were full of information, one was particularly memorable. she gave us a one page (two sided) handout with 10 big issues. then she talked and showed pictures of the details of each issue. the narrative lead to many questions and she drew us back to the inevitable conclusions. it's a subject I knew nothing about (that was true pretty much for all four lectures), but one that I felt that I now know enough about to venture into using the common book.

modest presentations, foregrounding the main ideas. succinct, direct and well illustrated. practiced, fluid, deep backgrounds.