On Teaching

by Judy Young

I have found through my own experience and through the experiences of my students that teaching a subject with encouragement and understanding is by far the best way to learn any subject. On something so immediate as speech, it is easy for a person to feel invalidated if they do not instantly get how to do the correct sounds.

A person can learn with a lot of duress and pressure, but to encourage and strengthen what the student is doing right I find goes a lot further toward the goal of learning a subject. It helps one to learn a subject more easily and feel more confident in using what one learns than feeling threatened in some way.

When I attended acting school where I was taught speech training, my acting teacher, who was one of the top teachers in the U.S., used to tell us, "You don't know anything!" Somehow, I guess he used to think this would help us. When people did move forward anyway, they were pushing through this negativity in order to achieve their goals. There is enough negativity out in the world already without adding to it.

Ultimately, the best way to achieve a goal is to have the skill and complete confidence that what you are doing is the best job you can do. When you concentrate on what you are doing right and accept that you have things to learn, then you can feel good about yourself and your abilities. From there, continue to concentrate more on what you're doing right, then step to the next higher goal. When you know what you know, nothing and no one can shake your confidence.