Just to bring yesterday's thoughts to a close with a little story about how differently people think, here's what happened many years ago at my birthday party.

We were all sitting in the living room back in our old apartment, me and a number of friends and of course the most patient man of them all, and chatting away and having a good time, and then suddenly one of the many physicists in the room points at my little spinning wheel standing in one corner and says "How does this thing work?"

So of course I do what you do in such a situation - I pull out the wheel and I show how spinning is done, and I explain that this both twists the thread and winds it up at the same time, and it does this because the treadle drives the wheel and that in turn drives the bobbin, and the flyer is taken along for the ride by the yarn running through the hooks, but slowed down by this brake thing here, so they go at different speeds and this is why the yarn is wound onto the bobbin.

Blank stares. No comprehension whatsoever. "Yes, but how does this work?" So I try to explain again, showing all the different parts, explaining how the rotation of the whole thing twists up the fibre into yarn, and the flyer is just taken along for the ride by that yarn running over it, and I try to find different words, and different angles to look at it, but I have no clue how to explain it better, and I am met with blank stares still - I just can't get it across, and I'm getting frustrated, my goodness, there must be a way for me to make them understand?

Because, you see, I know my friends. I know very, very well that they are not stupid. At all. Or slow on the uptake. They are working at university, they are making science, they are writing their PhDs, and I've read some of the things they write, and I don't even get half of it, but I do get enough to know they are very intelligent people. And still... I just can't get that simple concept of how a flyer wheel works across to them.

So I'm sitting there, about to start over again with my explanation though I'm really feeling helpless by now - and then the Most Patient Man steps in, and he says just four words:
"It's a slip clutch."

Around me, six or seven men go "Aah." simultaneously. Now they know exactly how this works.

And me? When I think of this evening, I can still hear that "Aah", and I can also still remember the mix of feelings that I had about it - relief that at last there was clarity, and feeling slightly stupid because I had not been able to explain in a way to meet their needs, and at the same time realising that there can be differences in thinking so huge that the fitting explanation can be completely unavailable to me, and that it needed someone else who knows my way of thinking better, and who also knows the others' way of thinking, and knows the latter well enough to make the translation.

I have made very sure, though, to remember that term. These days, whenever someone stands before me, wanting me to explain the spinning wheel, and he (it's usually men) looks at me with a blank stare after the normal explanation, but it seems like he might be a technically inclined person, like an engineer, or a physicist, or something in that line of work, I take a breath and I say "It's a slip clutch."

You know what? They usually go "Aah." Finding the right words to explain is all it takes... and it also is what makes explaining, sometimes, really hard - because the right words do exist, only they might not exist in my personal dictionary. (Yet.)

I'm back home after a truly wonderful weekend - I think I had as much fun teaching my weavers as they had with the tablet weaving!

As always, what makes part of the fascination I have with teaching is how very differently people see (and thus learn) things. This gets especially obvious in techniques like tablet weaving where you have a combination of motoric skills (how to grasp and turn the tablets) and knowledge (when to do what) plus several directions where the tablets can move.

Sometimes, my explanations hit home straight away. Sometimes, though, my way of thinking and a students' way of thinking is so different that I need to find another way to explain, and that can be surprisingly difficult. In these cases, it often takes me a while to find out where I did not get across correctly what I was trying to, but once that has happened, there usually is a way to translate things and get the point right.

Mind you, this is by no means an indication of being "a bit stupid" or "slow on the uptake". Usually, it really just means that my way of thinking (and therefore explaining) is so different that it takes a translation, so to say, or a way of looking at things from a completely different angle. I've been having effects like this with the Most Patient Husband when I was trying to explain things to him, and he is certainly a very intelligent man who is quick to get things. We just see some stuff very, very differently. (Sometimes, by the way, someone else in the group thinks in some kind of inbetween way, and can help by phrasing things just differently enough to convey the message - and then I try to remember that for future teachings.)

So one of my goals when teaching is to find the words for everyone in the group to understand what I'm getting at - and the bonus, for me, is seeing all those large and small differences in how we all see our world.  And if you ever find yourself in one of my workshops and my explanations just make no sense to you, please don't think you are stupid, or slow, or unable to understand. Let me know that I have not gotten across, we will try to figure out where the problem is, and I will hunt for the words or the story or the way of explanation that will bring it home to you.

Because the way I see it is this: If I am telling you things, and you understand what I am telling you but choose to ignore it and do things differently, and you get into trouble - that is your problem (and I might or might not be able to help).
If, however, I am telling you things, and you do not understand what I want from you, that means I have not explained it well for you, and that is not your problem at all, that is my problem, because it means I am not doing my job right, and I will do everything I can to take care of it. So don't think you are slower than others - you just think differently, and we need to find the matching explanation.