Todd talks with his good friends and fellow artists, Jacquie & Brandon Ryan.
This episode looks at how people teach, learn, and maybe don’t learn. We all need a motivation to learn, and many of us will require different styles of learning such as visual, auditory, practical hands on tasks or live demonstration to get started.
One simple rule to remember is this: Sucking is learning. Making mistakes is when you learn. Learn how to make mistakes and pick yourself up. Nobody likes failing, but using that as fuel is worthwhile. As the military put it – ‘Pain retains!’
When people are motivated to learn then they will do so more successfully.
This is a dense episode of the podcast, and this blog post will serve as extensive show notes to help you follow along. Key points discussed in this episode are:
- Learning is a series of Plateaus and steps.
- Making different mistakes rather than remaking the same errors.
- How different people look at their work. I have failed more times than you have tried?
- Many craft subjects are not core subjects and so do not call to greater numbers.
- Tough love – the balance between constructive criticism v being cruel.
- Placing higher expectations rather than assuming low-level standards.
- Bell curve of ability. – people who don’t show up v students who are so good, they make the teacher want to learn from them.
- An entitled attitude of paying for knowledge rather than actually doing the work – as if knowledge is a tradeable commodity.
- Trying to avoid the pain of learning and thinking the discomfort is an indication of avoidable errors which isn’t their responsibility to bear.
- 10,000 hours addage.
- I like gore but is a gore artist a likely career -too specific but becomes part of a larger skillset
- See the successful person and no clue of their journey to that place. Social media show highlights and omit the essential failures.
- Likes Culture – curated reality and a refusal to account for genuine competition. Mediocrity becomes the standard.
- Take the licks and deal with the criticism. You need to be told but most people can fall apart when presented with honest failures. The standard may then fall to accommodate an increasingly sensitive stock of students.
- Kids may have no idea why they are studying, told by parents to study or keep a grade point average. Kids passing up classes they may find interesting because of a grade point average and may avoid harder subjects because of it.
- Relationship between teacher and learner is important, as that freedom to feel safe enough to make mistakes can allow talent to blossom.
- People discovered that they have a new ability they didn’t know was there, awakening a love for something.
- Is there a responsibility on the student to be ready to learn, V inspiration coming from the teacher? What is the division of responsibility in that equation?
- Students who don’t turn up, and who clearly don’t care enough and should not be allowed to take a disproportionate amount of time expecting them to catch up.
- Some will not improve no matter what you do, some will improve with coaxing and others will succeed anyhow, and there is a danger you will gravitate towards these. Know this as a parent sending in students! Why a teacher does or not do something, maybe it is a student lack of action.
- School is where you make mistakes – sweat spilt in training saves blood spilt on the field.
- Teaching and caring – if you ain’t learning then I ain’t caring! Who is worth your attention.
Many thanks for listening.
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#51 – Neill Gorton