If you’re an anime fan, it’s likely you recognize Assassination Classroom. It’s the yellow simple faced looking octopus. The premise of the anime is that the octopus alien teacher, who the students call Koro-sensei, teaches the art of assassination to the bottom ranked class of an elite school with the goal of having the students assassinate him in a year. Both the character images of Koro-sensei and synopsis made it hard to take seriously and for a while I just could not bring myself to watch it.

But that’s a perfect example of don’t judge an anime by its cover.

Assassination Classroom is a whirlwind of everything. It has perverted jokes, funny gags, and slice of life vibes, given that it’s a classroom of middle schoolers. At the same time, there are also themes of toxic education hierarchies and of course, the dangerous world of assassination.

There’s so much character development in this show on top of just great and likable characters overall. Although the premise of the show may seem nonsensical, there’s unsurprisingly a backstory and reason for everything, which ties it all together to create an incredible heartwarming journey.

In Assassination Classroom, Koro-sensei doesn’t just teach the class about assassination, but also their studies and how to be outstanding human beings, unlike the condescending elitists at the school.

Because he’s essentially an alien with supernatural powers like super speed, he goes above and beyond in educating the class, like creating personalized reference books or assignments catered to each student’s strengths, weaknesses and individual learning styles.

Plot twist – the students actually learn and don’t stay at the bottom of the ladder. Wow who knew?!?

The Life Lesson

We may never get alien superpowers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t teach others the optimal way (or pray every night for some miraculous supernatural accident).

Teaching is in my opinion one of the hardest roles out there. You have to know your stuff, be able to answer any question, know how to corral children, and worst of all, manage parents’ expectations.

Let’s be real – high school students have no idea what they’re doing. Heck I barely had an idea of what I was doing in college. I have no idea what I’m doing now! What even if my life? Oops, apologies – did not mean to almost have an existentialistic breakdown. I’ll save that for a different life lesson.

High school (or sometimes middle school) is really the first place where you start to learn more about yourself, your ambitions, strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. That’s why I believe the quality of teaching & learning is the most important during secondary school; teachers aren’t just teaching the subject, they’re teaching the students how to find themselves.

You can’t JUST be a subject matter expert. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if the majority of folks don’t understand your point, that falls on you. Even if only 1 person doesn’t understand, that’s still on you to figure out how to help them understand, in the way that THEY can best learn. That’s what it truly means to teach effectively. This skill in itself doesn’t take years of studying, but it’s in no way an easy feat. It’s an art, not a science.

This doesn’t just apply for high school teachers though. This applies whether you’re trying to teach your kid, explaining a technical concept at work, training someone, or even mansplaining! Disclaimer: I do not promote mansplaining. Please do not credit Bedtime Bossing as how to mansplain better.

So what are some ways you can teach effectively?

• Analogies – relate it to something they like and you can teach them while making a genuine connection with them at the same time
• Applications to real-world examples
• Hands-on experience – learn by doing it yourself
• Learn by teaching – you truly master something when you can teach it yourself
• Visualizations (could be in 2D OR 3D)
• Hitting them with a wooden spoon whenever they get something wrong

Ultimately you need to understand the nuances of your audience and what you’re trying to teach. This could be just talking to them and asking them. A lot of people (especially if they’re younger) may have no idea how they best learn. This is then on you to observe what churns the gears in their brain.

Back when I had a tutoring job, I found chemistry to be a more enjoyable subject to teach than math. From what I’ve seen, people HATE chemistry. I get it— lot of it is theoretical—atoms and molecules are the core building blocks of chemistry but we only have models of what their structure is based on experiments. I can’t go grab an atom and show it. But when you start getting to other topics, that’s where it starts to get more fun. For example, when teaching about gases, I would always relate it to common world things like soda pop, and why no one likes a warm, flat coca-cola. Then everything starts to make more sense.

Maybe if Assassination Classroom had come out decades earlier for the older generations, we wouldn’t have all these irrational fears of wooden spoons or sandals. Or… maybe they would have just turned into anapsytikophobia (the fear of soft drinks), which really isn’t that bad for your health.