You Need to Learn Something New All the Time

As a Mah Jongg teacher of thousands and thousands of people every year I see all the different ways that people learn. Over the years I have improved how I communicate information so that people of different learning styles and abilities can all gain as much knowledge as possible.

From teaching children to 80+ year olds all the same material I have gotten enough data points to make some broad generalizations. There is reason children go to school when they do. They are sponges when they are young and can pick things up quickly. Humans continue to get to be better and better learners to a point and then they start to slow down. I find that with the very old it takes a little longer to learn new things, but learn they still do.

The best students at any age are the most curious, wanting to know the “why.” My favorite class to teach is Advanced Beginner Mah Jongg. It is a class helping people learn how to think about the game, rather than just learning the rules like they do in beginner Mah Jongg. The class and I all work on the same hands, but the students work in groups discussing possible moves and then together we discuss the best move.

Normally that class is three days long and what is extraordinary is how over the three days people go from sometimes getting the answer right to almost always getting the answer right as they train their brain how to think about the strategy.

The most exciting thing to me is to see how older students improve at the same rate as younger students. I find that at first older students take a bit longer, but with each exercise it is like their brain has turned on high and then they hold their own. It is a little like the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race.

The one thing I have come to appreciate is that those repeat students I have who come to a class every year or twice a year make the greatest leaps and bounds in their skills, especially older students. It boils down to the fact that we have to keep exercising our brains in new a different ways as long as we live.

Thanks to my students for teaching me so much about teaching you. It exercises my brain everyday and the bonus is I get to spend time with you.