"Every teacher is always trying to be a bit of a psychologist too",  

overheard on a Monday, at Big Blue Data Academy

I’m in a hurry to get things done, pushing to the way it is no fun.

Alabama Band Song

In every level of education, at every age, there is one factor that determines everything. We talk endlessly about logic, about future prospects, about motivation but rarely is any of that what actually decides the fate of a single lesson. That four-hour stretch where you're sitting across from someone, talking, waiting for something to click, hoping they'll answer, solve the problem, and maybe, just maybe, enjoy it.

The elephant in the room is psychology. Behind all the technical content, education is fundamentally about people: real people with real feelings and real personalities.

Working adults who clock in from nine to five. Anxious students who need a job and need it soon. People in bootcamps who are genuinely hungry to learn. And people carrying problems you don't know about and never will. Then there are younger students, with smaller problems on paper but an emotional intensity that magnifies everything happening inside them.

The game is always played on that field.

A small Babel starts to form. Everyone may be sitting in the same classroom, following the same lesson, but they're not all hearing the same language. The teacher becomes a kind of conductor, trying to read the room, understand each person in it, and somehow bring out the best in all of them at once.

To do that, you have to become a bit of a psychologist. Every person is a fortress, and most of the time, there is no easy way in. You can't use a battering ram. That's not a luxury you have.

The only way in is through an invitation to tea. The student has to want to let you in. They have to trust you, and hand you the tools to teach them. You're asking them to work hard at something difficult but the goal is for them to enjoy it anyway, in spite of the difficulty.

There's a song that goes: I'm in a hurry to get things done, push and push 'til there's no fun. That's a state you must avoid at all costs. Once you get there, once learning becomes a grind with no joy left in it, you've already lost the student. Even if they finish the course, even if they complete the bootcamp, you've taken something from them that matters far more than any certificate. You've taken their desire to learn. Their curiosity to go further. That's a crime worth the death penalty.

We never remember the teachers who walked in, delivered their material, and walked out. We may remember the strict ones but never the ones who simply did their job and nothing else.

The teacher we remember is the one who tried to teach us something real. The one who moved us, not just because the market demanded a certain skill, but because they made us fall in love with a subject. The will to want to learn has always beaten, and will always beat, the obligation to learn.

We all have at least one teacher in our lives without whom, without whose spark, we wouldn't be where we are. I certainly do.

How many films have been made about teachers who simply teach the curriculum correctly and leave it at that? I can't think of a single one. But Dead Poets Society, who can forget that?

As both a teacher and a student, that's always the teacher I would choose. And the reason I'm part of an environment like Big Blue Data Academy is because there are people here who genuinely care about their students. The goal at the end of the day is deep knowledge, real inspiration, not just enrollment numbers and attendance records. Because this place is closer to John Keating than to the headmaster of his school, whose name nobody remembers.