It is said sometimes that the great teachers and mentors, the rabbis and gurus, achieve their ends by inducting the disciple into a kind of secret circle of knowledge and belief, make of their charisma a kind of gift. The more I think about it, though, the more I suspect that the best teachers—and, for that matter, the truly long-term winning coaches, the Walshes and Woodens and Weavers—do something else. They don’t mystify the work and offer themselves as a model of rabbinical authority, a practice that nearly always lapses into a history of acolytes and excommunications. The real teachers and coaches may offer a charismatic model—they probably have to—but then they insist that all the magic they have to offer is a commitment to repetition and perseverance. The great oracles may enthrall, but the really great teachers demystify. They make particle physics into a series of diagrams that anyone can follow, football into a series of steps that anyone can master, and art into a series of slides that anyone can see. A guru gives us himself and then his system; a teacher gives us his subject, and then ourselves. –Adam Gopnik
One night Dr. Richard Coop, the great sport psychologist, came to hear me speak, and when I got done I asked him how I did. He told me that I needed first to remember that the audience hears only 10 percent of what you say. So from that point on I’ve always made sure that I repeat my main points at least 10 times to guarantee that my students get 100 percent of what I have to say. –Hank Haney
Good teachers make teaching look easy. Bad ones approach it like they’re haphazardly dissecting a cat. They address every movement, and by the time they’re done, they’ve taken apart the entire cat. There’s blood and guts everywhere, but where is the cat? --Jackie Burke, Jr.
Dad [Claude Harmon] didn’t believe in complicating the uncomplicated. He couild always find the one thing in a swing that would correct 10 problems, not 10 things the student needed to do to correct one problem. Dad believed that his job as an instructor was to teach, and the student’s job was to learn. If you wanted head nodding and hand licking, you should buy a dog. –Butch Harmon
