23. Teaching someone

Describe a time when you taught a friend or relative something

You should say:

what you taught them to do

whom you taught

how you taught them

how you felt about it

Some years ago I taught my nephew to tie shoelaces. I thought it would be a piece of cake as it takes no more than two seconds to do it. And we, adults, do it automatically without thinking about it. I mean it's as natural as breathing. So I thought I would show it once or perhaps twice and it would be done, but sometimes things don't go like we think they will. This was just the case. He couldn't repeat after me. So it turned out to be one of the biggest challenges in my whole life.

My mom told me that this process could up to a month of consistency and dedication from both the teacher and child (and a l patience).

I understood that, first of all, I myself had to learn how to teach somebody. So, I watched a number of video tutorials which showed different ways to teach a child to tie shoelaces. After that we started practising 5 minutes every day, and I broke down this complicated task into smaller steps in order not to overwhelm the child.

At first, we practised with his shoes off. I used laces of two different colours to help him differentiate one lace from the other. We started from learning to make a star knot. I showed him how to cross the left of the lace over the right one, then wrap one end around the other, and pull both ends complete the knot.

When he finally succeeded, we moved on to a more complicated task. I started teaching him to make both ends into 'loops' that look like bunny ears, and then repeat all those steps that I've already described. Every day we took one small step forward.

Everything was ok when we did it together, but when I asked him to do it himself, it was terrible. It was as if he had never practised anything before. Several times I was on the verge of losing my temper. But I didn't give It was a challenge for me. I wanted to s I was capable of as a teacher. When it ai. over and he managed to tie his first shoelaces single handedly, I had a sense of satisfaction and relief.