Teaching Experiences

Coming to DC has presented me a number of teaching experiences. Besides all the teaching I do at work. I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach Sunday School at church and to give a talk in Sacrament. As always, I'm the one learning the most. All of these opportunities have helped remind me of some very important principles to effective teaching:

• The Spirit is always the teacher (even in teaching I do at work)
• The student need to be engaged, active participants, and to be presented with problems to solve, not just be lectured at.
• The best teachers are sometimes people without degrees or special training.
• The most important tool in teaching is the teacher's attitude. (click here for more on this)
• The best thing we can do in teaching is to make it very easy and simple to understand (even when teaching adults, in fact, more so when teaching adults)

Slightly unrelated to this post, but slightly related....I've decided that whatever I end up doing in my career, it needs to involve people interaction. Lots of people interaction. During the last couple of years, being in school has been tough, but what's actually been more tough is the feeling of alienation you get from sitting in front of the computer for long periods of time. Oh yes. We all know what that feels like! I know some of you reading this are agreeing with me right now. I thought I had learned this lesson back in the summer of 1999 when I had a job at Garcia research, sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time trying to get some hispanic ladies to detach themselves from their soap opera to answer some of my insignificant (and sometimes ridiculous) survey questions. Apparently, I needed to relearn this lesson, but believe me I have. I now know that Andrea needs people interaction. I would like to say that we all do, but there are some people who are happy working with the computer all day. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.