On Teaching: TAKING AIM

I was not a thorough teacher yesterday, not careful to cover my lessons in a slow and deliberate manner, so, when I got home, I did a little dictionary research. After searching through various definitions and synonyms, I came upon the word “punctilious”, a synonym for “thorough”. What’s interesting about the word is that it derives from two Latin words that mean to point and to pierce. As I thought about my classes yesterday, I realized that I wasn’t totally focused. I wasn’t pointing myself directly at each specific task in my lesson, and I surely wasn’t piercing the heart of each task, or the main idea of the lesson, or the minds of my students. It’s disappointing, because this kind of care and attentiveness is not that difficult. It’s no more complicated than an archer pointing an arrow at a target or a surgeon piercing the body of his patient in order to restore the patient’s health. Of course, in a way, these actions are complicated, but not to a trained expert, which is what I’m supposed to be. The archer who has honed his skill over many years finds it fairly easy to focus the arrow directly on the bull’s eye, just as the surgeon has little problem getting right into the heart of the problem and restoring health to the patient. I am a highly trained teacher, and, as such, you would think I could point my attention directly on each part of a lesson until I had completely pierced the minds and hearts of my students with the “point” of the lesson. You would think I could be “painstaking” –-willing to endure a little mental discipline and pain –- in order to complete each step of the lesson in a comprehensive manner. Yesterday I wasn’t, but today is another day. Today I will take more careful and steady aim.