I was a young teaching assistant standing in front of twenty college students when one raised her hand and asked the answer to an economic problem. I had recently passed my doctoral exams in economics, but I did not know the answer.
After a fleeting moment of panic, I said, “Let’s work the problem together.” Step by step, I led the class until we had a solution. More importantly, I had an epiphany.
I had not been trained to know all the answers. I had been trained to find the answers.
That was the difference between me and my students. My job was not to give them answers but to show them how to find their own answers. Along the way, I watched many students hunt and find the correct answers
Corrie ten Boom is one of my heroines. Her parents did not give her the answers for surviving the Holocaust. However, they trained her to find the answers she needed. (See In My Father’s House by ten Boom for more.)
Even today, it helps me to know my adult sons know where and how to find correct answers.
Training anyone?
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