Steve Jobs has said; "The best marketing is education". Turn that around: the best education is marketing. Sell your message, wrap it up nicely and grab your audience's attention. If we want engaged learners, teachers should not be too afraid or lazy to reach out.
The best teachers aim to inspire.
I remember a wonderful math teacher back in my hometown The Hague, called Bart van der Meer. We called him Bart until he turned vice-principal. One day he came to class with a frying pan, a small gas burner and an egg. He cracked the egg and held it high above the pan. The egg came running down in a straight vertical line - as you would expect. His point? To vividly demonstrate how the Y-axis runs, compared to the vertical X-axis - Y having the same sound as 'Ei' meaning egg. I learned that day that teaching is about inspiring, that a good teacher goes the extra mile to grab his students' attention and that visual imagery can be very powerful.
O yes, and I have never forgotten that the Y-axis is the vertical one.
