I had really terrible time in grade school, even though I was in an excellent school system. The kids I was with became a notoriously difficult group as they passed through the school system, many of them ended up in the alternative education system for our school district a few ended up in jail.

My mom is a teacher and she values education quite a bit. This caused a lot of friction between us over the years as I was a terrible student.

My first grade teacher was in her first and last year of teaching. We broke her will, got yelled at a lot and didn't learn much.

My second grade teacher was about to retire and was a mean old lady who hated boys. She ruled with an iron hand and wrote my mother notes about what a disruption I was in the classroom every week. I was on punishment most the school year. I went into that grade an extrovert and came out an introvert, any social activity in the classroom resulted in negative consequences. I scholastically entered a shell that I wasn't going to come out of till college.

I learned how to read in third grade. I went from a first to a sixth grade reader over the course of the year. My teacher was trying to keep a bad classroom in order, I just read so She liked me and tried to keep me supplied with quality reading material. I love her for that. I read all through third grade, gave my introversion some direction. Went back as an adult and found her teaching at the same school. I told her how letting me read was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

for fourth and fifth grade I had tough guy teachers. They spent a good amount of time yelling and dispensing discipline. Wasn't a very appealing learning environment.

Past that I was just checked out. I did enough homework to pass, but got many bad grades. I I would read books in class, only paying attention if it was interesting. I even slept in classes. I had three great high school teachers who got 100% of my focus. A few more decent teachers who I generally towed the line for. I was generally on punishment at home or getting hassled at school for my behavior and grades.

Went to college seriously more than a decade later and I found it pretty enjoyable. Don't know if I just shed all my shitty school baggage or if college is that much better than an excellent high school.

Now that I have a kid who needs to learn how to learn and will also need to be a student someday.

I realize that I have to keep my shitty baggage about school being a shitty prison where learning how to get by is good enough and let her decide how she feels about it for herself while I paste a big supportive smile on my face.

I know that I need to help her realize how valuable reading is. Most of my education came from reading whatever interested me. I really think that reading is one of the most enriching things in life. Friends, family, books and food is all I really need to get by. We have tons of books, our kid has something like 100 books and digs reading, so it seems to have started out well.

As long as she cultivates a love of learning then she will be a good student of life. I see people who don't know how to live all the time, talking on their cell phones at the cash register, letting who 'won' the latest debate have a bigger impact on the way they will vote then ideas or values, not realizing a $0.50 tip will get em a shorter pour on their next round after they bitched about the price of the drinks on the round before. So I'll provide a stimulating environment for my kid, take her to the museum, art shows, musical events, the theater and give her plenty of books and hope it teaches her how to learn, think and observe.

I guess my guiding principle for being a student is to cultivate a love of learning, nice when teachers do that was well. I think I learned that 'cultivating a love of learning' was one of the highest values in Analects of Confucius while reading under my desk in some godawful high school class.

Somewhere I saw a political cartoon: a human teacher has a class composed of a variety of animals (a horse, a fish, a chimp, etc.) and says to them all, "You will be scored on how well you climb a rope."

I have the strong opinion that the standard 'one size fits all' approach is deeply misguided. I feel this way having experienced the educational system from both sides, as a student and as a teacher.

As a kid, I was a shy nerd. For exercises, teachers always paired me up with idiots and slackers. I always ended up doing all the work. As a direct result the dolts had that much more reason not to challenge themselves, because no matter how much or how little they could do, it was far below what I could do. I had little reason to challenge myself, either, because as long as I was smarter than an idiot, I was doing fine.

Gym class was the exact opposite. The jocks would get heaps of praise for doing what they would have done anyway, whereas I couldn't catch a ball and no one ever took the time to give me some remedial fitness training.

As an adult, when I had the chance to teach, I decided I wouldn't offer a level playing field. The kids in the middle were content to work on their class assignments, and I'd give them a little help and a little challenge here and there. The kids at the top end, I'd not hassle them in the least, except to come along now and then to really challenge what they thought they knew. That left me with the time and emotional energy to dedicate to the kids at the low end, who needed a lot of help and encouragement. Let's just say that worked out very well for everyone.

Now 20+ years on, my kid is of school age. He's like me: I see him crushing his schoolwork and receiving praise but not really being challenged to excel. Conversely I see him on his soccer team needing a lot of extra help and encouragement that he's just not getting. Naturally, then, he enjoys his schoolwork and hates soccer. I don't think it needs to be that way.

I don't know that I have a teaching philosophy, but when I am in a leadership position or mentoring someone, I try and do what you are referring to by "feeding them what they want", I try and cater to their motivating factors. I think the worst thing a teacher or leader can do is to assume all the people you are teaching have the same motivating factors. Teach to the individual as much as possible, I guess that's my philosophy. They may want "soup" but if you can give each their own favorite type of soup, then everyone wins