Teaching

I've been thinking about school a lot lately. Mostly because my son is already in school and partly thinking how I can make his school experience better and instill in him the love for learning.

I borrow books from the library every week and we make sure to read to him every night. Because of this routine we did since he was old enough to listen to stories, around 2 or 2 and a half years old, he now has the habit that he has to be read something every night before he will go to bed.

So how does this relate to why I'm thinking about school? Partly it's because of my experience with teachers while I was in school. I never really had any good teachers I can think of except for the two I had in my 3rd year of high school. One is Mr. Tumambing who was our Chemistry teacher and the other is Ms. Go who was our Geometry teacher.

I would say that both of them inspired me to do very well in their subjects. Mind you, I'm not an A student, most of my grades were just above passing, around 77 to 79 marks. But these two teachers were so good in teaching that they made it easy to understand their subjects. At least that was the case for me since I had other classmates who had trouble with these two subjects.

These were the only two subjects in my 3rd year of high school that I never had any problems with. I understood their lectures completely that I didn't even have to study for their exams, I just got 80s or 90s. My other teachers sometimes I feel like were just going through the motions and I hardly understood what they were teaching.

College was even worst, I had newly graduate professors who were practically just writing stuff they memorized from a book somewhere and expect you to understand what they were teaching.

I know all the arguments that I shouldn't have relied to be spoon fed that I should study and I should do my own research, blah blah blah. But I believe now that those arguments are just there to hide that fact that they don't know how to teach. No doubt, they know their subjects, but they do not know how to teach what they know to others.

And that is where the problem lies. I consider myself to be smart. My school grades may not show it, but in subjects where the teachers were excellent teachers, my grades will show that I can excel. My low grades mostly stem from boredom thatn not undestanding the subject.

At the time, I could not see how something that happened in 1941 (history and social studies) could be of any significance to me nor could I understand why the need to learn nouns and pronouns (English). I especially hated Rizal course (Filipino) and why I needed to learn Filipino when I can already speak and write the language.

Later, I realized that history and social studies is important because that is where you will learn how the world works and what has happened may and can happen again. Working in the financial industry, you will come to appreciate the history of money, markets and economic history. How the people reacted during the booom and bust in the past is pretty much how people will react to the current time's booms and busts.

I realized later that I should have learned better English writing since I never realized at the time that I would love writing. This blog is an example.

I realized that if the teachers and professors "sold" me on the subjects there were teaching, like why, how, when I would be using those information. I probably would have paid more attention.

Listening to audiobooks my John Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn made me realized that if you are a good teacher, you don't need a blackboard or notes or handouts. You just need to stir up your students imagination and they will use their mind as their blackboard. And that is more effective than writing a bunch of words on the blackboard all the time.

I love teaching other people and having learned from these speakers made me strive to keep things simple whenever I teach someone else about complicated matters. I used to work as a technical support for an ISP and part of the job is to teach people how to use their computers to use the Internet. This was in 1996 where the Internet was just starting and people are just beginning to learn to use their computers. I've encountered some people who doesn't even know how to minimize or maximize their windows.

That job taught me how to make things simple for people to understand and I have carried that over to my work in the financial services industry. It is even harder since I am explaining an abstract concept like investments and insurance to people who never think about these things until they need it.

And that is my challenge with regards to school, my son and what I would like to do in the future. I would like to be able to teach in a school, either in HS or University, teaching students about life, business, sales and how to succeed in life. I have been learning things about memory improvement, photoreading, how to become a better learner, etc. And I would like to impart these knowledge to my children and other students.

It would be nice to be able to do this. Maybe, sometime in the future.