And now, a study in contrasts. Sort of. I just really like that phrase. Anyway. (this is what happens when I try to write while having one my headaches). I'll try to focus, though.

Teachers, and teachers. I enjoy it when teachers (of anything) have two qualities especially. One, if they place themselves within a context. An example of context within history might be 'lineages' as used by traditional martial arts teachers or Siddha yoga teachers, where you can trace who taught who back to olden days. Obliquely from that might be combining, such as MMA or finding parallels in Sufi poetry and Sanskrit texts. Or from a different angle, context might be showing the students how what they're learning may be practically used - getting more out of films with close-reading, for instance, or take French-language students to a French restaurant to actually practice. Two, giving priority to common sense.

Which leads into the contrast. Sometimes teachers go purely by-the-book, which (another example) can be disastrously misleading in a martial art that is taught by principles over pure technique, or really any martial art in the end (not a person in the world actually fights from some deep stance or uses techniques straight from forms if they have any intelligence...but some still teach that anyway...). Or, to combine thoughts, using withheld reasoning ('my way only!') or tradition or by-the-book logic to narrow the focus of teaching, for whatever negative reason such as keeping the students low or fear of being able to expand or just need for control.

And I hope that was semi-coherent. I'm kind of afraid to go back and read it.