Hello all! Let me start this post off by saying that I'm not a traditional teacher. I originally tried going for a degree in English education over a decade ago, but a breakdown in college ended that and life has prevented me from returning to finish what I started. That's alright though, because with my passion for teaching, I couldn't help but continue my quest to become as great of a teacher as I could be.

This initially began as an attempt to come up with a brilliant idea I could write a dissertation about when I finally did return to school as I first hoped. Well, that never happened either, but the resulting years of studying and brainstorming left me with my current philosophy on teaching, which I use to great effect. Let me tell you about it.

See, when I was approaching the question, "What's the best way to teach?" I started climbing up a tree that I would later call, "The Communication Problem." In short, humanity has all this knowledge and wisdom, so how come each generation is generally left lacking when they enter the real world? I really dove into the logistics of what makes a student learn, all the way down into abstracting the relationship between teacher and student into the roles of transmitters and receivers. Came up with a bunch of hair-brained theories about how you could maximize each of their potentials to succeed at communicating, but ultimately I deduced that it all boils down to three factors: attention, trust, and connection.

Well, actually, it all began with me just focusing on attention. I had thought that if you could capture someone's attention, you could effectively upload whatever you wanted into their mind. This resulted in many failed attempts to create written content that I effectively blasted as far across the internet as possible. Didn't work; people thought I was annoying. But did I give up? No! I kept plugging away at my formula to solve The Communication Problem.

Sometime while I was on the out-and-out with news networks, I realized how important trust was to the process of intaking information as a receiver in the communication equation. If you don't trust someone, it doesn't matter how perfectly you craft your lesson, their ego defense mechanism will shut it down with counter-arguments without them even considering the nature of what you said. This led to me trying to be both as neutral on various stances as possible while functionally trying to emulate Jesus Christ. Needless to say, that didn't work either.

Then I had the epiphany while babysitting my cousins. They were at an age where they were developing their own interests, diverging from their parents', and while I had some difficulty explaining how to do their homework, they were able to perfectly sync up and get to the bottom line lickity split. This is where I realized that connection was so important. As a result, I started to make headway creating educational content by functionally marketing myself to like-minded people.

Eventually, these three things started to coalesce into a singular strategy to get gems of wisdom in the heads of as many students as possible. I started playing a crazy character, grabbing people's attention like mad. Likewise, I worked my butt off to become a better writer while I learned to stay centered in my heart and practiced nonviolent communication and that got more people to give me a chance in a discussion or debate. Finally, I started adding a heaping dollop of absurdist humor, which some people didn't like, but really clicked with other demographics, fostering a connection between us, easing their minds into a state where they're ready to absorb more lessons on philosophy, spirituality, and mental health.

I'll tell you this: I may not have completed my degree, but I'm adept at teaching now. Because I'm a content creator, I don't always see the effect I have, but I've built up a regular stream of people who reach out to me, thanking me for helping them in their quest to self-actualize. That feels really good. I might not work in a classroom, but I am teaching people nonetheless. This is my dream, and once I finish my first book, I'll be able to make it my dream job. 

It's all coming together, which is why I wanted to branch out and share my experience on this journey to becoming someone who positively impacts the world in a way that tickles my fancy. I don't think I've uncovered anything revolutionary, but maybe my words can illuminate some truth about teaching that changes you. Make enough changes in a person, and you'll change their life. Change enough lives, and you'll change the world. And isn't that the real goal of a teacher?