One of the greatest skills that a teacher can have is to simplify the complex.
This, in itself, is one of the greatest gifts in education; the people that I respect the most are the educators who are brilliant and have an ability to do this.
Many of them do it with stories or anecdotes which make it relevant to you and your life; they take a complex problem and break it down into the simple so that you can understand it.
What they then do is repeat this time and time and time again: friends of mine whom I've known over the years who have been way more successful than me tend to have the ability in one line or one paragraph to break down a complex problem and to make it understandable.
Perhaps it comes with age, perhaps it comes with wisdom, but it becomes one of the most important things to distil down a lifetime of experience into something simple that people can take away, which ultimately makes many things better.
Blog Post Number - 4582