However, I will gripe about his messianic tone. As far as I can tell from his blog post, he's taught only one class! Even if he taught a few others as a grad student, my point holds.
When I first started teaching nine years ago, as a grad student, I had miraculous success with my classes. I didn't have any grand scheme like btilly did; all I had were some commonsense observations from my father, a lifelong teacher.
But as a new teacher, I was really learning the material for the first time (that's the case with virtually all new teachers -- it has to do with the process of teaching), and so I could carefully observe the students' progress at every step. If they stepped into a pothole, I stepped into it with them: I felt that I had failed to explain something clearly if the students didn't get it. (btilly says the same.) The students loved the class, they became very competent, and their enthusiasm for the subject attracted attention. I was a star teacher.
However, as the years have ground on, I have taught the same subjects over and over again. I'm no longer on a journey of discovery along with the students. Instead, I know where every curve and pitfall lies. I can see a pothole a mile before we get there. You might think that this makes me a more effective teacher, because I can make the journey a smooth arc from beginning to end. But it doesn't: intellectual discovery is about stepping into potholes, not sailing by on a cruise ship.
I'm still sort of a star teacher (evals are very high, and my classes are always full, in part because word gets around), but I've never had a class with the same enthusiasm and brilliance as that first one.
(I'm an adjunct professor, so I get paid shit wages, and I have no incentive to do a good job, but that's a different story.)
So I gripe about the messianic tone in btilly's post because it sounds like precisely the sort of thing a successful new teacher would say. (BTW, not all new teachers are successful.) I wonder if with a decade of teaching experience he would see his miraculous method as the distinguishing factor in his early success. In fact, his early success may have been due primarily to the advantages of a neophyte, which are hard to sustain.