Teaching in the Dust

How do you know the lesson has taken root?

There is always a moment after teaching when the room empties,

the dust settles, and you're left wondering what truly reached them.

Concepts travel quickly.

Skills travel slowly.

And both move on their own schedule.

A concept is a spark: bright for a moment, uncertain afterward.

You only see its truth when someone returns with clearer questions or applies the idea where the world pushes back.

Learning science confirms this: understanding reveals itself through use, not recall.

Skills live deeper.

They settle into the body the way water settles into wood.

You never see the exact moment the grain changes.

You notice it later, in the way someone moves with a steadier timing or catches problems they would have walked past before.

I'm learning that my job isn't to force insight.

It's to create the conditions:

Clarity,

patience,

repetition,

a little room for mistakes,

a little space for courage.

The rest is theirs.

The Zen teachers say that effort is a kind of prayer.

You tend the garden even when nothing seems to grow.

You teach the lesson even when the faces stay unreadable.

You trust the unseen work.

And then one day, without fanfare, a student does something small and precise and utterly new.

A quieter decisiveness.

A question from a deeper place.

A choice made with intention instead of impulse.

That's when you know the seed took.

Not because you watched it sprout…

But because you recognize the forest it will someday become.

Field Note

Learning is not a moment. It is a migration. Trust the steps you cannot see.