The Masters

Attention class. We have an important lesson today.

I’m going to try and draw an analogy between golf and teaching. Your homework this weekend was to have watched the Masters Golf Tournament on TV. Yes, I would have liked to have taken you on a field trip to Augusta but that was out of the question.

Did you hear the commentators talk about technique vs. touch?

If you’ve ever played the damn game (it’s very frustrating) you know you need a big bag of skills. These include how to hit the tee shot, the fairway shot, the approach shot and the putt. I’d say as many books have been written about golf techniques as gourmet cooking.

Even if you are reasonably good at the game ~ here is an important point, class ~ you sometimes abandon technique ~ for touch. Touch is just that ~ an innate sense of how you have to hit the ball. Yes, the little white ball that lies on the green fairway some distance from the impossible-to-see 4.5 inch cup. Forget the talk of a “hole-in-one” ~ just use some touch to stroke the ball accurately so it rolls up reasonably close to the cup. It’s very easy to do … watching on TV, that is.

Here’s the analogy: good teaching is similar (what’s that? You want to continue talking about golf?).

Effective teachers need a bag of skills learned formally at college, then picked up from colleagues down the hall and honed with on-going professional development such as workshops. Good teaching is hard work.

Very good teachers (“master teachers” ) possess effective techniques and a sense of touch. They instinctively know how to work with children and teenagers. They like their students. They know when things are right and when things are wrong. They sometimes abandon technique for touch and ~ presto ~ it works. Keep that in mind.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about using the driving range, Buddhism and the importance of lesson plans.

Class dismissed.