Musings on teaching
Why I don’t teach many “advanced” classes
I saw an email with the latest classes coming up at Ra Ma - a place in Los Angeles I bought an online access workshop from once recently.
Apparently Friday May 5 is the second full lunar eclipse. From the email:
The second eclipse of the 2023 eclipse cycle takes place on Friday, May 5, 2023.
This Total Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio is a catalyst for aligning you with your highest growth and transformation. We've got you covered all day with eclipse experiences with Harijiwan, Mandev, Tashi Powers, Teg Prakash, and a multi-healer symphonic sound bath with Ana Netanel.
Then it goes on about the workshops and one is Astrology for Beginners, which sparked this thread of thought.
I love teaching beginners. I think it’s so awesome and so easy to frame what I’m trying to get across to youngins-in-experience whether it be Jiu-Jitsu or embodiment or how to give someone a massage, when I get to assume nobody knows anything.
But I don’t often frame something for advanced practitioners, although I should. I’ve gotten into trouble when I assumed a certain amount of knowledge from a room before and it was actually mixed between beginner and advanced.
You want it to be accessible to the newbie but interesting to the advanced.
And when the group is generally advanced I just prefer to have a growth-oriented conversation with them, or to create a framework for them to explore what they already know.
In Jiu-Jitsu it might be telling the advanced class to practice their single-leg takedowns for 2:00 each unresisted, then with enough resistance that they don’t get their first try and have to chain things, or adding some other variable that makes the game more entertaining. But it’s not explaining what a single-leg is. Which I would for a beginner’s class with assumed ignorance of such things.
In bodywork classes it might be the difference between giving advanced people permission to do what feels good for them or to focus on a certain aspect of their perception, but a beginner might need someone to let them know they even have a perception and that could be close to overwhelming for them to ingest the first time.
The socratic, question-oriented route can work for either.
In a group of experienced people that have always been told what to do you’re more likely to get regurgitation than insight. And the beginners are the ones who will come up with brand-new and better ways to do things I’ve never thought of before because they’re coming at it with fresh eyes. This is why engineers are often brilliant pattern disruptors when they consult for any industry, because they’re taught to look at systems and patterns and to care about and test what works in a real setting with consequences. Often consultants from other fields are filled with air and high ideas and wishful thinking.
I was thinking about adults and play the other day. Most adults act like the worst kind of new managers when they try to get involved in kids’ play. You know, the ones that join up and then start making changes for no reason other than to feel like they’re doing something, because they’re scared of feeling irrelevant, can’t let things just work as they are, and if they do make changes they don’t involve you in the discussion or ask you why you’re doing things the way you are. You could be working on a completely different paradigm and they’ll never know. You tend to be more experienced at what you’re doing than anyone else.
I just have a problem saying that something is “teaching” if I’m more likely to sit down with a group and say, “Well, what do you think?” Because that’s what I’d rather do with advanced people. I guess eventually that leads into metering out what I know that they don’t and comparing notes and practices, practically.
I think with newsletters like this I am hoping that something I say sparks your interest or makes you think about something that sticks for a part of your day.