Hollis Robbins: belief

Transcript context

…What are your intuitions? They’ll be some obvious correlates, such as putting time into being a better teacher. But the obvious correlates aside, what do you think are the hidden correlates with people ending up being excellent teachers? There’s a way of finding the channel of communication between the teacher and the student to be always open. The teacher has a number of students in front of him or her and is constantly opening that channel and delivering information individually to each student all the time in the manner that the student needs it. I can’t believe I’m about to gesture to Malcolm Gladwell, but his comparison of elementary school teachers to quarterbacks, I think, is fruitful in a way. Being nimble, being quick on one’s feet, being able to respond, to be able to call an audible. If a student asks a question, and the teacher can pivot and answer that student at that moment — there’s that quality of pivoting quickly that, I think, makes a really good teacher. Having raised two very successful children, what did you learn about teaching from doing that?…

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