Take a photo of a barcode or cover
birdmum 's review for:
The Natty Professor is meant to be a master class on mentoring. I'm not sure that I got that out of the book. My purpose for buying is that I'm responsible for recruiting and training volunteer educators. I find that the most motivated people turn out to be college students, and they do look to me for guidance from time to time. I've written a good number of letters of recommendation so far, and I wanted to try to create a more meaningful experience for my volunteers. I adore Tim Gunn, so it's difficult to write that I'm starting to be disturbed by his recent trend of naming and shaming in his books. Prior to this, it was mentioning an entitled moment by Anna Wintour in another books, which I suppose isn't much of a problem, as she's a public person, and known to be somewhat challenging for others. However, he's named a few people who were contestants on either Project Runway or Under the Gunn, and while I agree with his assessment of why some of these contestants were difficult, I didn't feel he had to name them, even if they did sign release forms before the shows started shooting, just because they're not as well known as someone who is a true public figure. Obviously PR has had truly difficult designer contestants who have been the subject of much online controversy, but these people weren't necessarily the most difficult on the show. Back to what I learned in the book. Tim has laid out what he calls his T.E.A.C.H. method and devotes a section to each - Truth Telling, Empathy, Asking, Cheerleading, and Hoping for the Best. In addition, he also briefly discusses less than brilliant pedagogy under the term B.A.D. Teaching - The Bully, The Authority Abuser, and The Drone. Rather than actually writing about methods that do or don't work, this leans toward an episodic retelling of various incidents from his career that illustrate the topics. I suppose what I would have preferred was more of a "how to," but when I finished, I realized that teaching/training is really an instinctual process and that everyone has to find not only what works best for them, but also direct that toward the individual people that we are trying to teach. I think I may have to have a reread when it gets closer to my next period of training newbies and see how I react to some of his words on a second read. Perhaps it isn't all that different from his advice on Project Runway, because I see that he gives feedback to his designers, but it's really up to them to absorb the information and apply it in a way that will suit them and hopefully create a positive outcome.