Success Express

My students learn because they want to learn.  Maybe it is because I realized through my studies and professions that if my students
Do not learn,
Did learn....,
Did learn to ...
And, I did learn how to think from Dr. Alfonso Nava, Dr. Ramon Cortines, Dr. Thomas Sowell, Professor Richard who taught me the fallacy of P = NP, and Mr. Homayouni... One of the greatest among the natural born mathematicians who taught me HOW TO THINK with a piece of paper and a pencil.  That is all that was needed except for one more thing...
A Teacher. 
The one that inspired me to always seek the answer to the question WHY?
No matter how old I would become.
Her name was Mrs. Strunk. 
She was my 3rd grade Teacher.  

How does my service stand out?
My students learn how to think so that even when they need help, they will never have to go back to the very beginning.  They will never look behind to make sure they are going the right way on that one path. 
If they need help it will be to look forward for the path they want to be on from the many paths that are ahead of them that they may choose from.  

At the start of school every year, I remember standing at my door and looking into the halls as they swelled up with students.  And this is what I would be thinking about.
How often I have looked upon the faces of my students as they entered my class.
I can see that when it comes to learning, a 
Veil of Mystification is telling from their eyes.

More often than not, they are fearful that they will never learn what they believe everybody else understands. 
And so they keep silent.
Sometimes that silence can be deafening. 
The first thing I have to do is lift that Veil of Mystification.  
Together.

How?  I teach my students HOW to learn forever by.....

The Socratic Method.
The Socratic Method follows its namesake, Socrates.  He lived from 470 to 399 BC.  He was a Greek philosopher from Athens.  He focused on issues of human life: one's personal happiness, justice, beauty, truth, and virtue.

I ask a question and my student thinks and thinks and thinks and then it happens.... they answer...on their own.  Priceless.  
My student asks me a question. I think about what my student answered before.  I begin to realize how they are thinking and that is drawing on their knowledge.
I got it.  I can see where they are coming from and then, and only then, I answer.

I look for the reaction of my student to my answer.  And then, I ask another question.  My student thinks about the question and the answers and the questions from before.  The student answers but it’s not over, not yet.  I can see that my student wants to go with this.....

And so it goes back and forth, and back and forth.  This is thinking about what has been said and then thinking about what may be asked.  And what may be said again....  The Socratic Method, the way we should learn.  

Albert Einstein said that "Education is not the learning of facts.  Education is the training of the mind to think."
Yes, we are thinking.
And I have never had a student that did not want to think.  On the contrary, they may have waited a long time to be asked.....

The Socratic Method is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and draw out ideas.