Overcoming the failure of instruction

The rightful owner

It wasn’t her fault that it took so long. I struggled to teach her everything right.

It began with how she perceived differently. I noticed the signs, the neighboring lanes and the oncoming obstacles. I could anticipate the behavior of the beings around us and yet she seemed blind to the obvious. I explained anticipation but that didn’t entirely work because she didn’t know what to anticipate. I made her look ahead but she couldn’t get past a few yards out of fear. I wanted to her to look around us but that distracted her instead of making her more aware. Her newness at this made her rely on her reactions rather than understand the predictive benefits of perception. Eliminating the ground rush wasn’t intuitive but I just could not make her see far ahead enough.

Where I also failed is explaining how she could orient herself absolutely and relatively. I have been counting intersections over 15 years, localizing myself between lanes, lines and lights. I knew where true north was but she would rather just let me point it out. I read maps for fun when she was navigating English literature. I didn’t know how to transfer a sense of direction to her when she has been the one pointing us right.

The most intuitive part of planning was the hardest to teach. Her long and short team decision making was troublesome. When I could not get her to perceive far enough, it had a direct effect on her planning tendencies. Our turns were too wide and too sharp. Her trajectory planning was tangential and incidental but not definitive. I could explain how smoother clothoids were ideal. I used math but she wanted something abstract.

Then I tried to teach her control. Our motion together was abrupt and sometimes full of panic. I wanted to speak but I screamed as if higher volume would make it clearer to understand. She had never before maneuvered a 2000 pound missile and yet I was her expect to modulate naturally. We yawed awfully. We accelerated unevenly. We braked jerkily albeit safely. I couldn’t teach her motor skills because I didn’t know how I got them myself in the first place.

What about her and her? She would indicate her heading speed but that was left unseen. She would click repeatedly but was sometimes left unheard. There was limited interaction but it was also the newness that made their conversation difficult.

Yet, despite my limitations, she and her made it through. There was an intense period of getting to know each other but eventually everything got better. Through our smoother turns, the gentler braking and easier merging into an American fast lane we both moved forward. She was finally unleashed to wander endlessly, with or without me. While I failed in making get her there earlier, she succeeded in showing me her ability to learn new skills through the fog of unclear instructions, unjust screams and my inabilities as an instructor.

Mostly though, Elsie Otter was just thrilled.