It happens every spring. On the first warm day somewhere around the first of May, garter snakes emerge to mate. If I walk through the woods on that particular day, I can see dozens of snakes. During the rest of the year, I walk in the woods almost every day and rarely see a snake. In the middle of the winter, with a couple feet of snow on the ground, I could look for snakes as hard as I could but I would never ever see one.
Teaching is much like this. I have to be patient and know when it's time to push a student to the next level, to the next challenge. It's a matter of timing. Of waiting for the teachable moment. Of knowing when the students are ready, when the classroom dynamics are ripe. It's intuitive. It's instinctive. It can be learned from experience, I guess, if you watch the patterns. It's like catching snakes in the woods.
11 comments:
And yet we can’t use a mongoose against our students! LOL
OK, so trust me to get stuck on the literal sense of the simile, but...remind me not to go walking in the woods in May!
That speaks to me so much today. Homeschooling can be the same.
How profound!
Ooh. So not interested in catching any snakes.
Brrr.
Really probably not very good at teaching any students, either. In fact, I'd have to say that my reaction to college students is about the same as my reaction to snakes in the woods! Brrrr!
What a fantastic analogy. Sometimes I just need to know when to push a little more. Sometimes, the magic's not there, and no amount of pushing will give my students the Eureka Moment, no matter how hard I push.
Lovely...but ewww. I just can't get past the image of all those snakes.
This is a great analogy. I love to read your posts; they are always so beautifully written.
Snakes scare the hell out of me. ahh
hi!
I'm Mary and I'm italian.
I like yuor blog... ^-^
bye bye
The first time that I saw this snakes came out, I thought it was the end of the world, they were a lot in our front and back yard.
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