At a certain point, the teachers worth their salt will tell you to figure it out for yourself. And there’s irony for you: Because we as students…we want to have everything figured out for us by that one teacher.
The last true lesson, however, isn’t that there’s only one teacher, but an infinity of them.
In scouts we taught and our boys used EDGE. Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable. However, I often forget the words and just do them! I like to know why I am doing something before I actually do it. If I forget the why and just jump in, well….that doesn’t always work very well! I have messed up many a recipe because I already know what the end result is, I’ve made something similar, so off I go. (actually, the last mistake I made turned out better than the original might have!)
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When I was a high school teacher, I used “figure it out for yourself” like I use garlic–sparingly. It takes a lot of preparation and front-loading if you don’t want to end up with a smelly batch of garbage.
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The best teaching I have ever received were from those teachers that taught me how to teach myself/learn on my own. I was fortunate enough to have a few of those.
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When I was at university, one of my professors told us that a well-known writer came there one year as a guest speaker. The lecture hall was bursting with creative writing students keen to hear his advice. He stood before them and said: ‘You want to write? Then go home and write.’ That was it. It may not seem like much, but this simple story containing this simple piece of advice has done me more good as a writer than MANY writing lectures, workshops and tutorials. It forced me to figure it out for myself. And, for me at least, that is the most potent method of creativity 🙂
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Kent Wayne 
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