Teaching Practice

You’ve assessed your teaching skills. You’ve designed a teaching plan. Now you do the thing.

There is no way to learn teaching except by teaching. You can read about it forever. You can design beautiful lesson plans. You can think about it until every detail is perfect on paper. None of that makes you a teacher. Teaching someone does.

This is the same principle from the four stages. Stage three is practice. You’ve been in stage three for your area of expertise. Now you’re in stage one for teaching — and you need to get to stage three fast, which means doing it.

Start Small

Don’t launch a workshop. Don’t build a course. Don’t announce a class. Find one person willing to learn one thing, and teach them.

Low stakes. Informal. Maybe a colleague who’s been wanting to learn something you’re good at. Maybe a friend who’s asked for help with something in your domain. Maybe someone you’ve noticed struggling with something you could easily show them.

One person. One topic. One sitting. That’s it.

What Will Happen

Here’s what will go differently than you planned.

You’ll start explaining and realize your sequence is wrong. The thing you thought should come first needs context that you skipped. That’s fine. Adjust.

You’ll use words they don’t understand. Technical terms that are second nature to you will draw blank stares. You’ll need to drop down a level and find simpler language. This is the expert curse in action. Notice it.

You’ll move too fast. What takes you two seconds to think through takes them two minutes. Your pace feels natural to you and overwhelming to them. Slow down.

They’ll ask a question you didn’t anticipate. Maybe one you can’t answer. This is gold. This is teaching revealing gaps in your own understanding. Don’t bluff. Say “I don’t know — let me think about that.”

You’ll have a moment where it clicks for them. You’ll see it happen. Their face changes. Something connects. That moment is why teaching matters. It’s also the moment where your own knowledge deepens, because you just found a way to make it transmissible.

Getting Feedback

After you teach, ask them directly:

What made sense? Where did you get lost? Was there a moment where you were confused but didn’t say anything? What would have helped?

Most people are polite. They’ll say it was great even if it wasn’t. Push past that. You need honest feedback to improve. Tell them you’re developing your teaching ability and their honest response helps you more than reassurance does.

If they can do the thing you taught — do it, not just nod along — the teaching worked. If they can’t, something needs to change. That something is your problem, not theirs.

Learning From the Attempt

After the session, while it’s fresh, write down what happened.

What did you plan to do versus what happened? Where did you deviate from your design? Was the deviation better or worse?

What worked? What moment did understanding happen? What did you do right before that moment?

What didn’t work? Where did they get lost? What did you do — or fail to do — that caused the confusion?

What would you change for next time?

This reflection is how teaching skill develops. Not from the attempt alone, but from the honest assessment of the attempt. Every teacher who’s any good got there by doing this — teach, assess, adjust, repeat. There’s no shortcut.

Today’s Practice

Go teach something. Use the design you built yesterday. Find the person. Do the session.

It won’t be perfect. It’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to be real. A real attempt to transmit what you know to someone who doesn’t know it yet.

Then get their feedback. Write your assessment. This is one cycle of teaching practice. You’ll need many more. But this is the first one, and the first one is the hardest because everything after it is an iteration.

Go do it.