I totally missed the month of April. Right now I'm thinking about mastery. I'm thinking about improving one's skill. Anders Ericsson wrote a book called Peak. And many more scientific papers. The book is mindblowing in it's applications. It's about how to get good and better at something, at the fastest rate, continually. Normally we get "good enough" and then stop growing. This is how to keep growing. This is how to become among the best. At anything. But also just how to become good, at anything, most efficiently. What doesn't that apply to? Mundane things, like your job, your hobbies, your relationships. But also sublime things: discipline, focus, equanimity, meditation, mindfulness. A sense of humor, joyfulness. Etc. Etc. Etc. Anything. Anything. I think most people read it and think it's cool, but I read it and it strikes me on the level of a genuine miracle. And yet, his work is not done. He researched what the necessary components are. What needs to happen next, is to weaponize it.
We need masters in creating masters. Masters in the art of mastery. Part of mastery is working really hard for a prolonged time. How do we help set up the situation to get someone to do that? To work really hard, stay out of their comfort zone, for a prolonged time? That itself is a skill, to be mastered. I want to help people become good at things. That's kind of the job of a teacher. I suppose part of it truly is just to pass down knowledge. But as a trainer, it's more than that. I want to sculpt my students into the best versions of themselves. That requires true learning, not just information gathering. And it's a very complex process, that involves their work more than mine. I can't eat for them, I can't practice for them. How do I inspire and support them to develop their own habits of mastery acquisition?
I particularly want to apply this to teaching. Teacher training is really bad. It is ineffective. And it's one of our most important jobs. That's bad. It's also lopsided, only helping with the intellectual, rather than the character growth necessary to become a positively contributing member of society. A really smart person can create an atom bomb. A person of excellent character creates a nonviolent movement for freedom and peace.
A fundamental problem here is the catch 22 that I myself have not learned, ingrained, the skills and habits (and I suspect, identity) necessary for mastery, and I need mastery level skills to do what I want to do: create an exceptional training program for teachers. I'm deeply unqualified. I am not an exceptional teacher myself. But actually I don't know if that is necessary. I need to learn how to create a training program for teachers, if that's what I want. That is different than teaching. But I think knowing what it takes to be an exceptional teacher will provide good guidance in the creation of the program, and to truly know that, is to be it. The field of education is full of administrators who have not done the work in the trenches and thus give ineffective advice and training, or only partial views.
It seems like such a simple and powerful idea, I can't imagine it not moving people: science shows that teaching programs do little to nothing to improve the teaching outcomes of people who go through those schools. Here finally is a program that holds itself accountable. It is hard, it is uncomfortable, but if you go through our program and do all the work, you are extremely likely to be a first class teacher by the time you exit it. you will be achieving results with your students that only the top 1% of teachers are able to get. It's not magic, it's science, it's the same thing we expect of our students: practice, test to see how much you've learned, reflect, practice, improve, test again. The same way the field of athletics or music has honed training techniques to produce incredible results, we have applied these strategies to create a training program for teachers that is truely, provably, measurably, deeply effective.
And I want to go beyond that: we will take ordinary people and bring you to the place where you can become masters, which takes the cultivation of passion, perseverance, and a growth mindset.
And even beyond that, we will teach you how to cultivate your students character, the secret factor for a truly peaceful and happy classroom, and the secret factor for a peaceful and happy world.
How can you say no to that? That's why this passion, this dream, burns so brightly inside me. The world needs it.
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