Teaching Quotes and Excerpts from other Traditions

Yoga Teacher Training
#1

The Eight Duties of a Teacher

[ol]
[li]To be sympathetic to students and treat them as his or her own children. The teacher must care about the student’s welfare as mothers and fathers care for their own children.[/li][li]To refuse any remuneration for his or her services and accept neither reward nor thanks.[/li][li]Not to withhold any advice from the student or allow the student to work at any level unless qualified for it.[/li][li]To use sympathetic and indirect suggestions in dissuading students from bad habits, rather than open, harsh criticism.[/li][li]When teaching a given discipline, not to belittle the value of other disciplines or teachers.[/li][li]To limit the students to what they can understand and not require of them anything which is beyond their intellectual capacity.[/li][li]To give backward students only such things as are clear and suitable to their limited understanding. Everyone believes him or herself capable of mastering every discipline, no matter how complex, and the most simple and foolish are usually most pleased with their intellect.[/li][li]To do what one teachers and not allow one’s actions to contradict one’s words.[/li][/ol]
[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT]-al-Ghazzali
[/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] [I]From the book ‘Essential Sufism’, ed. by James Fadiman and Robert Frager[/I]

#2

very nice ! Suryadaya!

Good teaching is an art and passion . It’s about not only motivating students to learn, but teaching them how to learn, and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful, and memorable. It’s about caring for your student, having a passion for it, and conveying that passion to everyone, most importantly to your students.

#3

[I]"I feel like a gardener who planted a bunch of seeds and nothing came up; and again the next year he planted a bunch more seeds and nothing came up; and again the next year more seeds and with the same results; and so on and on and on. And then this year, he planted a bunch of seeds: not all only did they all come up, but all the seeds from the previous year came up and all the seeds from the year before, and so on. So, I’ve just been frantically running around trying to harvest all the plants until Allah came to me and said, “Don’t worry. Harvest what you can and leave the rest to Me.”[/I]

[I]-Sam Lewis, quoted from the book ‘Essential Sufism’, ed. by James Fadiman and Robert Frager[/I]

#4

Mostly I agree with the 8 points but…

Disagree with number 2 we have to make a living, I have to buy food, pay the rent etc. I get very annoyed with people who think yoga should be taught for free or cheap…yoga has [B]never[/B] been free…teachers have always accepted something in return for passing on their knowledge.Not always cash but often some kind of exchange of service…but I do get equally annoyed by teachers who charge very high fees…
And I feel it would be rude not to accept thanks…but do so in a gracious and humble way and not allow it build your ego, also the teacher should not teach expecting thanks.

and…
Be sure not to let your students know that you consider them “backward” !!

where did you get that from? “backward” is a bit rude and a very old fashioned way to describe someone!!

#5

Thank you Suryadaya. Food for thought.

Love the first. Building a sense of family/community, for me is very important.

Very much agree with yogacambodia about the second. No teacher should ever “expect” anything in return, except a student willing to learn. However, if a student wants to show appreciation it would be wrong and hurtful to the student to not accept it.

And there is no such thing as a backward student. Only student.

#6

[QUOTE=yogacambodia;68160]where did you get that from? “backward” is a bit rude and a very old fashioned way to describe someone!![/QUOTE]
As sourced, these are from old translations of Sufi teaching texts. It’s not yoga-based and I’m certain no one here would ever tell their students they were “backward”, just posting excerpts from other traditions as I find them! Food for thought. :slight_smile: