Teaching others is one of the most underappreciated but powerful forms of study. When you explain a concept to another person, you’re forced to identify gaps in your understanding, clarify assumptions you didn’t realise you were making, and translate complex ideas into language that actually makes sense. This process itself is a kind of intellectual refinement: by teaching, you learn twice.
In high school, I personally found this to be one of the most effective study methods. Even though it wasn’t intentional, when my friends and peers would ask for help, I found myself becoming their tutor in the lead up to exams. This meant improving my own understanding of the material, so much so that I began to develop a kind of efficiency for explaining concepts deeply and clearly to others.
This has led directly into my time here at First Education. By teaching students, not only am I becoming a better communicator myself, but I am given the opportunity to pass along these skills to my students. By helping them achieve a deeper understanding, they become fluent enough in the ideas we are working with to be able to translate them and to pass on this knowledge to their own peers. They begin to identify their own misconceptions and assumptions and link together the concepts they have learned.
For students seeking to deepen their understanding, tutoring provides a structure that naturally pushes them beyond surface knowledge. And for tutors, the act of teaching becomes continual revision, rehearsal, and refinement. Ultimately, teaching is not just a service but a method of learning, one that transforms knowledge from something you have into something you can share.

Tyler Klinger