Two Ingredients for Making Magic

There are two key ingredients to magical teaching, and these ingredients can be applied well beyond the field of education.

The first ingredient is that the magic isn’t in the teacher, it’s in the student. The more we recognize that there’s a creative, loving, and passionate genius within each of our students, the less our job becomes about getting somewhere in a lesson and the more it becomes about supporting students to unleash this genius. Once we realize that we all already have everything we need to thrive in life, we can simply respect, honor, and support the perfection already within ourselves and others.

The second ingredient of magical teaching is to adjust to the terrain in front of you, no matter what the map says (I’ve found this principle to be true with life goals as well). Teachers have objectives, intentions, and goals in mind when working with students, and these goals are like a beacon in the distance. When we create a lesson plan, we have expectations that the class will follow the plan as designed and we’ll arrive at the beacon of understanding together.

However, the actual terrain of the journey can surprise us, and we’ve got to be aware and willing to adapt in the moment. We need to adjust to the bumps, sinkholes, mountains, and rifts that show up along the way. All it takes is to be aware and willing.

Try these ingredients in your own relationships, whether you're a teacher or not. Trust me, they're magical.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

Curiosity Is an Access to Genius

Wil (not his real name) is likely the most inventive and intelligent person I’ve ever met. He's an engineer out of MIT who stayed home to raise the kids, and he volunteered to work with me in the engineering lab after school. For more than five years he would show up and provide engineering guidance and training to students (and me!).

The lab would be full of students working on various projects: robots, human-powered vehicles, CO2 cannons, electrolysis tanks, and particle accelerators and bubble chambers. Wil and I would talk and laugh and have fun together with the students.

Wil looks at problems from a completely different angle from the typical way of seeing things. Where my engineering solutions would often take the obvious path, his would be upside-down and backwards, and ultimately more simple, effective, and elegant than what I’d come up with. It was genius.

Eventually, Wil’s approach rubbed off on me a little bit, and I realized that though his approach was still genius, it didn’t take his MIT engineering degree to pull it off.

Wil shows up. Students would come with a question or a problem, and Wil would hear it out, ask a few additional questions to get clear on the challenge, and then guide students to seeing their own solution by asking even more questions.

In other words, Wil is exceptionally curious. He approaches every challenge as if he has no idea what is going on, and he builds a fresh new perspective on whatever shows up in front of him.

When we’re curious and engaged like that, the problems and challenges we face become much more interesting, and we’re also able to be much more creative.

It’s funny now to think about it - I always thought that Wil’s genius came from what he knew, but it actually came from his pretending in the moment that he didn’t know anything. When we don't already have an answer, we have a lot more room to be curious and creative.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

Secretly Cheering for Us

There’s a tension I sometimes feel as a teacher (and as a parent, friend, son, and colleague). It’s the tension between giving my students room to express their creativity, curiosity, and authentic selves, and reinforcing the roles that school, society, and culture have taught us adults that we’re supposed to play.

In the classroom, when the noise level gets too high or the conversation steers away from the topic I planned, my impulse is to steer it back to where it’s supposed to be: quieter and focused on the class topic. That’s what the classroom is supposed to look like.

As a dad, when my five-year-old was spinning around the kitchen with food in his hands, my impulse was to tell him to sit down and eat at the table. That’s the way we're supposed to eat.

For myself, when I feel inspired to say something new or take actions in an unconventional or untrodden way, my thinking generates all sorts of reasons why I should stay in my lane and carry on.

There’s always been and there always will be a pull to the accepted, expected, or conditioned way of doing things. We may always tend to see things as we’ve been taught to see them, to act in ways that are acceptable and socially safe to act, to resign ourselves to our lot and hope for the best.

But that doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for us or for others. And it doesn’t mean that we have to live that way.

Resignation, frustration, overwhelm, stress, and cynicism are optional approaches to the challenges we face personally and collectively. We can thrive in life no matter the circumstances - and anyway, despite the pull to the status quo, society is secretly cheering for us to wake up and bring our innate, creative, and passionate genius to live a more compassionate and enjoyable life for ourselves and others.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️