Hardest personal lesson learned?

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by marshall

The hardest personal lesson I learned this season...

I've never wanted to be a teacher.

This was the year I learned that I am one. It turns out mentors are teachers. Oops.

What's more aggravating to me is that this is the year that I finally learned what I want to teach my students. I don't actually want to teach them about science or math. I don't care if they learn engineering skills from me. I learned this year that the thing I want to teach is almost impossible to teach someone. I want my students to learn passion. I want them to care so much about what they are doing that they infect other people with it... be that FRC or anything else.

You know what, I take my previous lesson back. That was still an important lesson to me but it's not the most important.

The most important was a combination of what you've posted -- and a caveat. It's good to remember that we're not here to build robots. We're here to build students. The caveat is that it takes time, and not every student will get there at the same time, or even get there at all. And that's OK. Some change seems overnight. Others will take far longer. Our job is to be passionate. The rest isn't up to us.