I know something about students of all ages, of all walks of life, of all professions:
Without solid support, a motivated community of learners, and a consistent adapting and narrowing focus and goal, we lose interest and quit.
How do I know that this is needed?
I am that student.
Purchasing courses with all the intent of going through the whole thing and barely making it through the first quarter of the course without getting distracted by another shiny, squishy…
“Squishy. I’m going to call you Squishy and I’m going to make you my Squishy.”
Did I say distracted?
I go from goal to goal, from focus to focus. I start this course and work on that course. I write this blog and that one.
If I don’t see immediate gratification in any of these areas, I stop and keep changing directions till I do.
This group is going to fulfill all those needs and desires for excitement, interaction, engagement, and best of all COMPLETION.
Are you like me? When you COMPLETE a task and feel good about it, you immediately look for the next thing to complete to replicate that feeling?
But we have a problem!!
People think course creation should be easy, but you know as well as I do, IT’S NOT!
It’s actually kind of torturous. Is that a word?
How will we do it?
We are going to break down the steps Barney Style. Barney Style, What’s that?
The purple dinosaur Barney. You know, the one who breaks things down to simple, easy to understand steps? That’s the one.
We are going to make a complicated thing easy.
But then that easy thing gets complicated again. It’s a dichotomy that good curriculum writers or course creators go through to make complicated content easy but continually exciting for our students.
After you teach a knock-out session, there will be that amazing moment when we hear our students say, “I was just thinking that!” and our reaction isn’t surprise, but a nod like Mr. Miyagi’s nod to the Karate Kid right before he kicked that guy in the face.
Good teachers aren’t surprised about the confusion, the questions, the struggles that their students will have. We already know.
Good teachers have planned for every possible scenario and we kick it in the face before it gets a chance to surprise us.
But this requires time and consideration.
That’s why you are here. That’s why we are on this journey together.
We’re the best… around. No one’s ever gonna take you down.