It may sound a little odd to say that we learn from our students. After all, isn't it supposed to be that we learn from teachers until we know what we are doing, then we become the teacher? Well, that's very true. However, it isn't the entire story. Ask any teacher about when they stopped the learning side of their job and they will probably say, "What makes you think I ever stopped?"
In the broader sense, I was reminded about this the other day when I did some tutoring. This being the season for college applications and scholarship pitches, there's a booming market involving students who want to get things just right so they can go to the school of their choice or get a big, fat scholarship to help offset the costs. Fortunately, this also involves students who are fairly educated when it comes to their writing, but they want things to shine, to really pop off the page. For that, they bring in the tutor - that would be me - and I get to teach them the tricks of the trade.Well, how does this amount to learning? Well, teaching someone how to raise their writing game is one thing. You discuss some techniques, you talk about structure and reader appeal, you go through their writing and work through the problematic parts - that's the teaching part. However, things really kick into gear when you point out how they need a hyphen in a particular spot, and they say, "Why?" Those three letters, that simple word has echoed through every parent's brain when their child first reaches the inquisitive stage. "Why?" That's when the teacher has to do more than say, "Because." They have to teach the answer, which means they need to remind themselves the reason behind a particular answer. This often means relearning what we now take for granted.
My favorite thing to teach is the compound modifier, which involves a hyphen. What is it? Well, in the sentence, "I took a fifty-mile ride on my bike," it is "fifty-mile." This is where we describe something - the ride - with at least two words that only work when combined, and those words get hyphenated. "Fifty-mile" describes the ride only when those words are used together in front of "ride," so it becomes this compound modifier. If the sentence was, "I took a ride of fifty miles," then there's no hyphen because we are separating fifty miles from the ride. This is used quite often when someone describes another person with a phrase rather than a word. "He's just a useless, no-good, couldn't-find-his-butt-with-two-hands-and-a-flashlight troublemaker," has three modifiers - "useless," which is straightforward, "no-good," which is a two-word compound modifier, and that huge phrase that counts as one descriptor so the whole thing is a compound modifier and gets hyphenated through and through. (And I actually snuck in another compound modifier into the paragraph just for fun.)
So, when my student looks at me and says, "Why?" my job is now to teach them exactly why such a rule exists. When I do this, I also reinforce within myself the reason these rules exist, their purpose in writing, and just why they can be important. I give myself a refresher course on these rules of writing, all while teaching them, and my writing skills are that much better.
(And I get paid for it, so there's that.)
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