Class dismissed; it went quite well. More than one student asked what you have to do to become an Apple Certified Trainer and teach these courses. It’s always such a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, it takes very little: you take the course itself, go get certified (two tests, 90 minutes each), take a “train the trainer” course, and start teaching. I did this; total elapsed time: 4 weeks. On the other hand, nothing can adequately prepare you for it, because you have to be a teacher before you can become a teacher.
English is a very bad language in which to explain this. Latin is better; in fact, most Latin-rooted languages (like Spanish) retain the distinction between the two Latin verbs “to be”, esse (to be, as in Hamlet, Descartes, etc., from which we get the word “essence”) and stare (to be at the moment, from which we get the word “status”). English has only one word for both, so we native English speakers tend to blur the distinction and say ridiculous things like “I studied this for 4 weeks and now I’m a teacher.” No, I was a teacher first; the curriculum is secondary.
There is a story, which was presented to me as a Zen story. I don’t know if it actually comes from any of the usual suspects in Zen literature, but here it is:
A man comes to visit a Zen monastery (which are normally austere and undecorated), and is surprised to discover that there is artwork on every wall. The man seeks out the head monk and asks, “I have never seen artwork of such grace and beauty. Who created these works?”
The head monk replies, “All the artwork is painted by the monks who live and work in this monastery.”
The man exclaims, “I must learn your secret! How do you paint such beautiful pictures?”
The monk replies, “Painting a beautiful picture is easy. First, become a beautiful person; then paint naturally.”
