Inspiring story of a good teacher

Derek Sivers recounts an inspiring story of how he got a multi-year music education in a few days from Kimo Williams, and makes a larger point about the excitement of learning at a fast pace with a good teacher:

After a one-minute welcome, we were sitting at the piano, analyzing the sheet music for a jazz standard. He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic scale. How the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a minute, I was already being quizzed, “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tritone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?”

“Uh... the flat-2 chord?”

“Right! So that's a substitute chord. Any flat-7 chord can always be substituted with the other flat-7 that shares the same tritone. So reharmonize all the chords you can in this chart. Go.”

The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me - keeping me in over my head - encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up, quickly. I was learning so fast, it had the adrenaline of sports or a video game. A two-way game of catch, he tossed every fact back at me and made me prove I got it.

In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee's harmony courses. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arranging requirements.

There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) (via Super Punch)

• [DildOverlord.exe]

  Reminder that this only works in one-on-one instruction, and even then it relies heavily on having a “gifted” student. If they can’t keep up, they’re run under the bus. Or shut down and just end up guessing answers.

  • [bcsizemo]

    I agree.  In his case the best possible teacher taught him at a pace he was just able to keep up with, which he enjoyed.  That doesn’t imply all students can learn this quickly, not saying if there was more one-on-one instructions that in general people wouldn’t learn faster, perhaps just not as fast as this student.

    Good teachers are benefited by good students.

  • [Ambiguity]

     Did you read the linked essay? It was about having high expectations and encouragement, not about being gifted or getting though stuff as quickly as possible. It was about the difference a teacher can make in one’s life.

    So I walked away having heard a different message, ’cause it seems to me that having high expectations for one’s self isn’t just for “gifted” people, and I think everyone benefits from encouragement and good teachers.

  • [digi_owl]

    One-on-one allows the teacher to pace things to fit the student tho. With a bunch of students, the slower ones will frustrate the faster ones by having a eternal repetition.

    The basic education system of today is built around the industrial revolution, and the need for a semi-trained workforce.

    • [Preston Sturges]

      True, but the conundrum is made 10 times worse when the teacher won’t provide supplemental material (like a couple solved problems) for the less experienced students (who may not be “slower” BTW).  Some teachers are all too intellectually lazy and emotionally weak to resist latching onto a ready excuse to play favorites and divide the class into “haves” and “have-nots.” 

      • [digi_owl]

         Sorry, i sometimes forget that in english slow is often used as a euphemism for stupid. Still, solved problems may not help if the student just cant get his or her head around the process.

• [nothingsmonstered]

   I learned ancient Greek in an intensive summer course. Walking in the first day, I was wondering how long it would take to learn the alphabet. Thirty minutes later, it was learned, and we were on to other things. It took a little while to get the knowledge solid, but that drill was just integrated in to learning nouns and verbs. Faster beats slower.

  • [Peter]

     I once took an English language phonetics class constituted for speech majors and crosslisted as a linguistics course. The work of the class could be summarized as “learn to transcribe English using basic IPA notation.” Nothing fancy, no close transcription or even notation of word or sentence stress. That was it, for a whole semester, just learn an alternate alphabetic system for a language you already know. I was kind of grateful for it since that was a semester I took on a 15 credit-hour load to go with my 40 hour work week, so it was nice to have at least one class I could immediately forget when I wasn’t in it.

    But I was apparently  unusual in that class, because by the end of that semester, large portions of the class were still struggling. 40 hours of in class time devoted to this one thing: learning to use the thirty-some-odd symbols used to transcribe standard American English, the native language of nearly the entire class, and somehow most of the students still couldn’t get it right without constantly looking it up. And from the fact that they actually talked about how they studied for the class it seems like it wasn’t just inattention or a lack of effort.

    It’s at times like that I wonder if people really are that dumb, or if many of them just don’t know how to teach themselves things.

    • [LennStar]

      Most people don’t know how to learn things. At least here in germany I know of no school that invests even one hour to teach the pupils how to learn. I file that under “amazing stupidity”.

      regarding symbols I think the problem for the most is that they try to remember how to move their hand or a picture of the symbol before their eyes. Which is nonsense for 95% of people. You have to play with the symbol, form stories, build a greater picture around it.
      I know that it was so for me in japanese lessons.  

• [PaulMorel]

  I have taught music in both the semester system and the quarter system. For the uninitiated, semesters normally last 16 weeks, while quarters normally last 11. The idea of the quarters system, which is at play in most of the UC schools, is the same idea in this article. Higher expectations. Less time.

  It doesn’t always work.

  It’s a life-changing experience to meet a good teacher, as was clearly the case for Derek. Nonetheless, more time spent learning a subject is ALWAYS a good thing.

  Real accomplishment in anything takes time. Students should be reminded that learning is usually a life-long marathon, rather than a sprint. It takes dedication every day for years for most people to learn a field, and what Derek describes in this article is only dipping his toe into the water.

  • [digi_owl]

     I think perhaps one can learn quickly, at least the basics, but really “mastering”, becoming fluent to they point of not having to think about it in any conscious sense, that does indeed take long term repetition.

• [Eccentric Genius]

  The downside of learning from a gifted teacher is the crushing realization that there are far too few of them.

• [Preston Sturges]

  At the other end of the spectrum are the strictly Socratic “hide the ball” pedagogues.  They have done serious harm to this nation, particularly in mathematics, and I mean they have actually hurt our national security.

  However, this is not a subject where people are open to persuasion. It is probably hardwired into their brains or personalities.

• [Mike Norman]

  Pshaw! That’s nothing. You should have seen him teach calculus to poor Hispanic high school kids. And after that, he single-handedly defeated the Cylons, probably with calculus and definitely with music theory.

• [lese]

  For whatever it’s worth, it took me ~24 years of trumpet playing before improvising finally began to sink into my brain. In college I practiced a lot and it never came easy. I kept playing in community bands as an adult, and finally it just all started to make sense as a whole.  It wasn’t lack of teachers, or desire, or work, just a mix of the musical opportunities I had and the way my brain was wired….

• [magicbean]

  I really hesitate to unconditionally cheer on speed as an unquestionably positive quality of good learning.   It makes it sound like learning is simply a race to be won, and s/he who dies with the most facts trapped inside neurons wins.   It’s nice if you can learn fast, but it’s also just as nice if you take your time.   If you presume learning to be a completely linear trick, then sure, speed is great.  But that’s only one way to approach learning, and I think an overemphasized one.    It’s great to have “high expectations” for oneself, but perhaps those expectations can include patience and nuance.  Integrity of learning is not defined by speed.   I would take a student with integrity over speed any day.

  Speedy learners often miss depth, richness, metaphor, and I dare say wisdom in the learning process.   

  I think it’s more interesting and powerful that this guy realized that he is allowed learn at his own pace.   But to call others people “chumps” for learning at their own pace is…kinda flat and dumb.

• [bytefyre]

  I’m a slow learner, in fact, I arrive at my college digital principals lab classes during the previous ones (same prof for the 11 o’clock class and the 1 oclock class) so that I can take 4 hours to do the lab instead of 2, so I guess this wouldn’t work for me

• [Kimmo]

  This cuts close to the bone for me. I’m filled with a seething resentment at my potential being pissed away in school, like pursuing it was some sort of inconvenient hassle rather the best investment a society could make.

  Back in 1980, my school refused to believe a 5yo could already read, bizarrely suggesting I see a shrink. Apparently this kept up until I told my teacher she’d forgotten an apostrophe. Fuckwits. And naturally, I had to sit through painful crap like being told how to tell the time, which I’d gotten the first time thanks, at kindergarten or off Sesame Street or whatever.

  Fast forward (cause 1x would make you as pissed off as me) to 1987, and the morons at my high school (junior high to Yanks) were trying to tell me how to read a clock once more. I’m quite certain it was at this point I realised the purpose wasn’t education at all, but childminding and instilling conformity. From then on, any teacher who wasn’t prepared to be exceptional had my disregard. They were enemies, stripping me of my fucking birthright.

  I went back to school in 2008 (having dropped out of year 12 in ’92), and didn’t quite adjust to the University system; I took it too seriously apparently, by aiming for high marks rather just passes. I’d been neglecting computational math in order to get my head around biology and chemistry, and three weeks from exams knew the subject little better than when I started the course; I was set to bomb. I was a solitary student, going it alone mostly because I suck at building networks, but partly because it was hard to find anyone in my league.

  Luckily though, I did find a study group of three others revising for the exams, one of whom had the gift for asking the right question. Exams came around, and I got high distinctions for bio and chem… as for math, where I had the benefit of a few days of effectively one-on-one time with the right dude (a fellow student, at that), I fucking smashed it. 100%.

  Very little of my potential has been realised. On the face of it, this is due to my crippling laziness. But perhaps I wouldn’t be so damn lazy if people weren’t so fucking scared of intelligence.

  I have an IQ somewhere around 140, but I’m absolutely certain that peeps who rate as low as 80 are having the best years of their time just pissed into the wind. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse how expensive it would be to educate people properly; the payback means every dollar you don’t spend on it belongs to an idiot.

  But this is old news. I suggest we start refusing to accept current ‘attempts’ at education as genuine, and asking why our governments are so bent on keeping us stupid.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    When I was in middle school (grades 5 – 8), we had tracks, so all the high-performing students went to 5-1, 6-1, etc. Everyone was sorted into tracks based on grammar school grades (?), IQ scores (?) We were taught to our level. We all liked school. It was also a very significant motivator to do well, since coming back from summer vacation and discovering that you went from 7-1 to 8-2 would have been like being kicked out of Oz and sent to gen pop.

    • [penguinchris]

      I believe a system like that is certainly the right way to go, but it’s not good enough as is. The way students are assessed is way too simplified and they’re mis-labeled all the time.

      I had the opposite experience of your example – I was always placed in the ‘regular’ track because no one knew my potential. Because I wasn’t challenged I didn’t usually bother trying to do particularly well (solid B student). Wasn’t until junior year of high school that I got into the ‘advanced’ track, and that was only at my own insistence, against the school’s resistance. By then it was too late to have much of an effect on me, ultimately, and almost everything meaningful I learned before university was self-taught. In other words, the public schools failed for me, big time.

      I’m not sure if you’re in favor of sorting by IQ scores or not (your question marks are ambiguous) but as far as I can remember we never had IQ tests when I was in school. I think if we had I would have been placed in the advanced track. But I’d hate to be the person who belongs in the advanced track but because of a flubbed IQ test is placed in the regular track, I guess, although sorting based on grades is no better.

• [Kimmo]

  Various fads take turns at dictating the way it’s done; for most of my time in Australian schools, elevating anyone based on merit was verboten, since it also involves (apparently inescapably) labelling others as sub-par, which has been shown to be something of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

  I really can’t help thinking that’s totally throwing out the baby, though. How many others are dragged down when we all wait for the idiots?

  I was never pushed at all. Now when I can’t immediately pound something into submission with my intellect, my first response is to crack like a little bitch.

  Pretty sure I’m not alone there. What’s the EPIC cost of that, multiplied by however many other forsaken students?

• [LennStar]

  Everyone has his own pace and get’s stuck at his own walls. The good teachers are them, who can help you around the walls with a few right questions.

  My advise: Always have something to learn. Blessed, if you have an advanced student and a professional as backup with you. (For most people and things you learn the most from the teachers who have mastered your problem just a little time ago and are 2,3 steps ahead.)
  Learn regularily.  Take one hour (or five if you can or even more) every day.
  Teach people who are on a lower level! it helps them and helps you. (Especially valid for Go (boardgame), together with the advanced-student-thingy. There is a reason why teaching ladders are so common in Go)
  And the hardest but most important one: Learn to ask the right questions.  One good question is more important than 10 good answers. Not only because the questions define what answers you can get.

• [Eve Sinaiko]

  Good artists who are also beloved teachers should get a shout-out for their own work too, so it’s worth noting that Kimo Williams is a talented and innovative composer himself. I remember a performance of his “Quartet for the Sons of Nam” in which the four musicians sat facing outward toward the four cardinal points (rather than watching each other), like sentries on perimeter watch. It was very moving. 

• [Kimo Williams]

  What I live by:
  “Once you place blame outside yourself…… Your resolve to conquer adversity is deterred”
  Kimo Williams

  • [Kimmo]

    A neat bootstrapping trick (is that related to pretending there’s free will?), but I can’t see how it can be an entirely valid or all-encompassing philosophy without recognising others as equals. Sure, you create your own reality, but it intersects with that of others.

    Therefore, some problems are inescapably attributable to others.

    If you always make the problem a question of your own perception, doesn’t that lead you to tolerate those problems rather than change them?