Teaching

I have been a teacher and a doctor for many years in my life. I have been formally teaching medical students, trying to deliver knowledge to them in the most interesting and most logical and understandable way, stressing why certain bits of knowledge are absolutely essential to keep in our brain and not in our smartphones.

I have made PowerPoint presentations. As a teacher you know whether the delivery of your lecture is effective or not because when it is effective, the audience, our students are quiet. They sit and look at you. They sit and look at your slides. And that is quite a rewarding part of teaching. I have had colleagues who were teaching and they became very irritated with the students because there was a constant background noise of students talking with each other in a slow voice. One of these colleagues burst out in a bout of anger demanding absolute silence. It worked for a short while. He got absolute silence for a few minutes but then the noise started again. The cause of the noise was not the students. The cause of the noise was a lack of preparation of the lecture by the teacher. He did not captivate the attention of his students. He was knowledgeable, he was good in his field but he did not apply basic principles to give a lecture that makes your audience silent.

It is not extremely difficult to give a good PowerPoint presentation. Two ingredients only. One, read a good book on how to create and give a good PowerPoint presentation. Two, empathy. Empathy? Yes empathy. Imagine yourself being part of the audience listening to you with the background knowledge of the person in the audience. What would you need to stay focused on what is said? What would jolt your attention back to the speaker and slides when you had been distracted by something else? If we think like this while making our slides, while preparing how we will deliver it, while doing the actual talk, we will be reasonably good orators, keeping the attention, avoiding the background noise of people talking to each other instead of listening to the talk.

But teaching is so much more than sharing knowledge. PowerPoint presentations are NOT the best way of teaching. I have created a few pages on interactive teaching with links below.

interactive teaching - intro 

interactively teaching knowledge

teaching-skills-we-may-get-it-wrong.

peer teaching and ownership

interactive sessions-to-teach-skills

Connection

 I think it is all important to get connected

When we talk about connection, chances are that the first thing we think about is internet connection in order to ensure our online meetings run smoothly or we can browse the internet. However...

Connection to our inner peace,
Connection to the beauty of nature
Connection to our conscience
Connection to the love that sits in our heart
Connection to our creative talents

These above type of connections may be so much more important to our level of happiness, to our level of functioning and satisfaction we get out of life.

Keep connected. Through the internet, yes, but do not forget to connect to peace, beauty, love and our Creator...(or if you do not believe in a Creator, we can get at least connected to the creative forces within the universe)

Small Opportunities

When in the morning, I pray

for seeing the opportunities to do good

and be courageous enough to act on them

I tend to notice during the day so many occasions

on which I can make a tiny positive difference

in the life of another man or woman

 

And each time I manage to act on these moments

I get a feeling of being a little bit afloat. 

My soul lifts my heart and my mind feels like singing.

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small prayers for a big world: https://smallprayersforabigworld.blogspot.com/

Really good poetry https://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.com/

some beautiful inspirational quotes:  https://quotesfromhans.blogspot.com/ 

a fantastic short story: https://afishwithawish.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-fish-with-wish-whole-story.html

or look at some beautiful skies: https://hansvro.wixsite.com/mysite-1/skies-seen-by-hans 

or beautiful flowers: https://hansvro.wixsite.com/flowersbyhans

or simply some essays about good things: https://abcofvirtues.blogspot.com/

New and old

If we want to start anew, we have to be ready to give up the old.

Revenge is truly useless

All the problems and challenges of the past are mere lessons

to be a better person today. No point getting stuck in the past.

People may have wronged you.

Just forgive them, even if they do not ask for it.

 

Why should we?

Because grudges, hatred and anger is like fire sitting inside

It burns our inner peace of mind, our inner soul life

and destroys our own happiness. The subject of our hatred

of our grudges, of our anger may be barely aware of our negative feelings.

Revenge is like giving the behavior of the other one full approval.
He or she does this to me, I will just blindly follow the bad behavior 

and behave in the same way to them. That is being a follower of evil.
Let us all be leaders of the good. No matter how others behave, 

we choose the good. We choose friendliness no matter what. 

The past is gone, we cannot change it.

It has affected who and where we are today.

The future is ours to come.

What we do and think and feel today

will determine who and where we will be tomorrow.

Hope

Our worries, our fears tend to consume all of our awareness

In past millennia that was a good thing. since our fears meant danger

If we focused on these things we would have a better chance of survival.

Our world has changed. We worry and fear for other things.

No longer life determining fears or worries, but simple things

And these simple things are still naturally dominating our consciousness.

Life has evolved. We do no longer need to pay 100% of our attention to fear.

We have a choice now, to become aware of the positives in our lives

We have a chance to become aware of the peace that surrounds us at almost all time.

I have gone through a difficult two weeks.

I fully understand how all consuming our problems can be

But it is always worth to try to make some time for beauty

Some time for love, some time to be fully aware of peace. 

We can make it silent, make a small walk in nature 

we can get ideas, and hope

Hope is a strong positive

We are not sure but we hope

We hope we pray, we get a bit of relief.

We can make time for beauty, love, creativity, peace

Let us hope and pray if we are a bit down. 

Let us be fully aware of peace and beauty when we are bit up

I wish you a day filled with bliss

Filled with beauty, peace and love

filled with creativity.

Like a butterfly

A small poem is to the mind

like a butterfly to the eye

like bird's song to the ear

like a favorite cookie to the tongue

 

A small poem is like a whiff of fresh air

rejuvenating a tired heart

like a long lost friend showing up

or like a dream of amazing beauty

A small poem, 

let us read a few of them right now

Here is a link to some of my favorite poems:

Aufie Zophy