Are You A How Person? Or A Why Person?

I was very fortunate to be a good student without having to try very hard throughout most of my grade-school education.

I paid attention in class. I did the work. I understood what was being taught.

Then I met Algebra I.

It was the first class in which I ever earned a C.

Math had always made sense to me before, but suddenly letters were hanging out with the numbers, there were rules I couldn't seem to keep straight, and something that had once been relatively straightforward became frustratingly abstract.

Still, I survived.

Then, in high school, I took Algebra II.

And I failed.

My teacher had a thick accent that I struggled to understand, which made an already difficult subject even harder for me to follow.

At one point, realizing I was in trouble, I asked whether there was extra credit I could do or perhaps a study session I could attend.

His response has stayed with me all these years:

“I don't teach twice.”

So I struggled.

Then I struggled some more.

Eventually, the technical jargon being discussed might as well have been another language. I couldn't understand what we were doing, I couldn't understand why we were doing it, and I couldn't see any path toward catching up.

So...I gave up.

By the end of the school year, I had convinced myself of something I'd never really believed about myself before:

Maybe I just wasn't smart enough to understand this.

Then came summer school.

Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled.

Spending hours every day studying a subject I had learned to despise wasn't exactly how I wanted to spend my summer.

And then I met my new teacher.

She was fun.

She was clearly math-minded, but she also had a creative streak. She didn't just put equations on the board and tell us the steps required to solve them.

She made them make sense.

Slowly, something strange started happening.

I understood Algebra!

Not barely.

Not enough to scrape by.

I became one of the top students in the class.

The subject hadn't changed, and I certainly hadn't become significantly smarter over summer vacation.

What changed was the way I was being taught.

I stopped feeling stupid.

I stopped feeling incapable.

I stopped feeling like I was failing.

And somewhere between all those equations, that teacher taught me something that had absolutely nothing to do with Algebra.

She taught me something about teaching.

Looking back, I think of my first teacher as a “How” teacher.

Here is the problem.

Here are the steps.

This is how you solve it.

Follow the process and you'll arrive at the answer.

For some students, that's exactly what they need.

But apparently, I'm not one of them.

I'm a “Why” person.

My summer-school teacher seemed to understand that I would have an easier time learning HOW to solve something if I first understood WHY I was doing it.

She gave the numbers context.

She didn't let terminology remain meaningless jargon. If we didn't understand a word, she explained what it meant.

She connected one idea to another.

Instead of asking me to memorize a sequence of steps, she helped me understand what those steps were actually accomplishing.

Once I understood the why, the how became infinitely easier.

There is nothing wrong with being a “How” teacher—or a “How” learner.

Some people don't need the backstory.

Show them what needs to be done, demonstrate the process, and get out of their way.

Others need to understand what's happening beneath the instructions.

Why does this work?

Why are we doing it this way?

What happens if I do something differently?

What am I actually trying to accomplish?

And maybe the truly gifted teachers are the ones who recognize that the person sitting across from them may not learn the same way they do.

Because teaching isn't simply knowing something well enough to explain it.

It's figuring out how to make what you know understandable to someone else's brain.

And that lesson reaches far beyond a classroom.

We teach our children.

We train coworkers.

We explain things to our spouses.

We show friends how to do something.

Sometimes we don't even realize we're teaching at all.

And when someone isn't understanding us, it's incredibly easy to think:

I already explained this.

But maybe the better question is:

Did I explain it in a way that makes sense to them?

My summer-school teacher didn't teach Algebra twice.

She was just willing to teach it differently.

All these years later, I can't remember her name.

I couldn't solve an Algebra II equation today if my life depended on it.

But I remember how it felt when something I had decided I was incapable of doing suddenly made sense.

And I remember the woman who showed me that sometimes struggling to understand something doesn't mean you're incapable of learning it.

Sometimes you just haven't found the explanation your brain needs yet.

So now I'm curious:

Are you a “How” person?

A “Why” person?

Or somewhere in between?