27. Speeds and Timing

Here’s a teaching tool that can not only enhance your effectiveness as an educator, it can change your life! It is all to do with speeds and timing. Being able to adjust your speeds and finesse your timings.

You’ve heard the saying – “Soon ripe, soon rotten.” It is also true to say – “Fast learned, fast forgotten!” How often do we sacrifice quality for the sake of expediency? When the pressure’s on, we tend to speed up, sometimes at the expense of the parts of us that need to take things at a slower speed. Thinking, for example, true thinking cognition is a slow process. It cannot be done at pressure.

So, here is a lovely saying – Go slow to go fast. Teach this and your students will be unstoppable.

U.S.A. culture tends to advertise speediness as a virtue. Everything’s fast, fast, fast. Instant everything! Pressure, pressure, stress, stress. This addiction to speed has compromised our health and well-being, our quality of life and education.

As we know, an especially good bottle of wine, a fine violin, a productive and sustainable garden and a happy marriage are all things that mature slowly over many years of tender love and care. It is the same with education. Hey, it is the same with being a human!

The greater the foundation, the greater the versatility! Go slow to go fast.

Resist the pressure to go fast. Find the speed that is natural to what you are doing, teaching, learning. It most often starts by simply slowing down.

Some folks don’t know how to slow down. Start by breathing more deeply… Walk and gesture slower… Pause between sentences… Notice your speeds… Notice your habitual rate of speech, movement… How long can you sustain a thought? Believe it or not, slowing down is energizing!

Going slower brings quality into what you’re doing. And… the slower you go, the more your students will actually assimilate and retain.

It is all about being good gardeners. The art of “growing” good learners, inspired learners, lit up learners, is all to do with timing. “Soon ripe, soon rotten,” they say. “Fast learned, fast forgotten.” What’s the point otherwise? If our young students of today can truly be given the gift and art of learning, think what they can bring to the future.

Go slow, to go fast!

~PAZ

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