Teach a Complex Skill

It’s one thing to be able to do something, like riding a bike or knitting a scarf. It’s another thing, and a much higher level of skill, to be able to teach that to someone else. You have to understand it so well that you can see what they’re doing and where they’re struggling, especially if they make different mistakes than the kind you made learning it. You need patience and humor. You need flexibility to keep coming up with new ways of explaining it until something clicks.

It’s not easy to do this — which is why it’s so satisfying when you do. Teaching a complex skill increases your own understanding. It’s also a form of leadership. You are guiding someone through an experience which results in them growing and doing what they thought they could not. That is leadership! You’ll come away with new confidence and the satisfying feeling of having given a valuable gift to someone else.

Getting Started: This one is a little trickier during coronavirus, but depending on your family and community, it may still be possible.

Make a list of your skills. List as many as you can think of. Consider categories like Physical/Athletic (like knowing how to swim), Academic Skills (like knowing how to research anything online), and Personal or Social Skills (like being a good listener). Ask your parents and friends what they would add, since it can be hard to think of all of your own skills.
Choose one skill that you feel confident in and can imagine being able to teach someone.
Online or Offline? Now you have a choice: since we’re still in the pandemic and tutoring someone or sharing it at school may not be an option, decide if there is someone around you who wants to learn the school (in your family, or friends you’re seeing in-person), or do you want to teach it online by? If online, you could make a YouTube video, write a blog, or make a website to explain the skill. Did you know that on websites like Teachable, people make thousands of dollars with videos on how to learn certain things?
Make a lesson plan. This will require you to think about the order of learning: what would you teach first, what does it lead to next? You may want to use the skill of backward planning at this point. That means to start with the final goal in mind - say someone wants to make a full quilt as a gift for their aunt in a month’s time. You can work backwards from that goal and that date, imagining when they’ll need to have it half finished, when they’ll need to learn each skill.
Go and do it! Based on your choice, work with a “student” among your family or friends, or create an online lesson. If you go the online route, make sure to share it with friends so they can give you feedback on what worked and what to improve.