Down Home: Listen to Dalton Roberts podcast on why he loved growing up in the Watering Trough community.
Some of my fellow teachers may not agree but I think we should immediately jump into something we want to learn while the spark is hot. If we delay for fear we won’t learn it right, the spark can fizzle out on us and no spark equals no attempt to learn.
Now, I am aware there are some things that need to be learned right. Like the touch typing. I didn’t learn to type that way and keep thinking I will go back and do it but never quite get to it.
As soon as the spark came to learn to type, I went out and bought me a small portable Remington. It was costing me to get someone to type my papers in college and I wanted to be a writer somewhere in my future so instead of learning the touch system, I learned the “Columbus System” — find a key and land on it.
Do I regret learning it wrong? Not really. I have written several books and thousands of columns, articles, songs and poems. I cannot use 10 fingers but I can smoke up the room with six! Still, at some point in time, I may learn the touch way.
Working toward a master’s in special education I took a lot of courses in materials and methods of teaching. I do know “learning it right” is best at times but learning it wrong is seldom fatal. But if you wait around until that spark of real interest dies, your goose is cooked. You may never learn it at all.
I probably didn’t learn to play the guitar right. At the time I learned there were no DVDs showing what to do with both hands simultaneously. You had to pick up your chords and “hot licks” from other pickers. Ten pickers today who learn by the same videos will sound a lot alike. Ten learning from 20 or 30 different pickers will have a rainbow of different styles.
The hottest electric guitar lick I do was learned while trying to duplicate a Jerry Reed lick on “Free Born Man.” I never did duplicate his lick but in sweating over my guitar for two hours I created one of my own. Accidentally. In other words, I learned it wrong.
Do everything like you do it. Don’t try to copy anyone. Carbon copies are worth no more than pennies. What the world wants to hear is what you hear that no one else hears, what you do that no one else does exactly like you.
Reading is something else I learned wrong. We have two basic ways of teaching reading: phonics and the “look-say” method. In phonics words are learned by their sounds. The problem with it is that all words are not sounded like they look. Take “phonics,” for example. It looks like it should be pronounced “p-honics.”
I learned to read by the “pester parents” method. From the time I could talk I would ask my parents to read billboards to me, and road signs. When I entered the first grade, I had been reading for years, thanks to the patience of my parents.
As soon as you feel that spark, dive in. It’s like learning to swim — you’ll start learning as soon as you hit the water.