Yesterday, in a workshop on student mental health, a teacher dropped a line that hit harder than any research paper ever has:
High-rankers don’t make great teachers because they can’t imagine what it feels like… to not understand.
I’ll admit, it stung a little. But research quietly nods along. What actually moves students isn’t the teacher’s own marks; it’s how clearly they explain, how they respond to confusion, and how safe they make it for a child to say the most honest sentence in education: I don’t get it.
It reminded me of sports. The best players don’t always become the best coaches. The game comes too easily to them. They never had to crawl out of confusion, so turning a complex idea into digestible steps feels like a foreign language.
(And let’s be real: some toppers explain things the way Siri explains emotions. Technically correct… but absolutely no help.)
Psychologists even have a name for this blind spot: the curse of knowledge. Once you know something deeply, your brain quietly assumes everyone else sees it the same way — and you skip the exact steps a beginner desperately needs.
Let me tell you a little story.
Raj, the Legendary Topper Who Couldn’t Teach a Straight Line
Raj was that student every school shows off at annual functions. Medals. Certificates. Equations solved before the teacher even blinked.
Years later he returned to teach for a term. Lovely intention. Terrible execution.
He walked into class assuming the students would “just get it.”
They didn’t.
He explained once. Blank faces.
He explained again — faster, as if speed would magically fix confusion.
By Week 3, half the class had spiritually retired.
The headteacher finally sat him down:
“They’re not slow. You’re too fast.”
Raj couldn’t believe it. He thought he was the one doing everything right.
Then one afternoon at a community centre, he met Meera — bright, curious, terrified of numbers. When he proudly showed her a shortcut, she tilted her head and asked the question that would change him:
“Why would anyone think of doing it that way?”
Raj froze. He had no idea how he had thought of it. He’d never needed to.
In research language, that was his crash course in metacognition — the ability to notice, name, and unpack your own thinking. Studies link it directly to teaching effectiveness and student learning gains. And Raj had just realised he’d built a palace of knowledge with absolutely no tour guide.
So what does this really tell us about teaching?
Teaching isn’t about being the smartest person in the room.
It’s about being the person who remembers what it felt like to be confused.
Great teachers do three things consistently:
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They imagine what it feels like to be lost.
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They break a big idea into tiny, friendly steps.
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They repeat those steps without the unholy sigh of impatience.
This isn’t fluff. Research on student mental health shows that when teachers respond to confusion with empathy instead of irritation, students report lower stress, higher engagement, and stronger academic persistence.
Large-scale reviews of what actually boosts learning place teacher clarity, feedback, and relationships at the top — essentially, how well we build the staircase and walk it with students matters more than how high we once topped the exam charts.
Topper or not, if you can do these three, you’ll be magic in the classroom.
And if you can’t, well… you might still be a genius — just not the chalk-and-talk kind.
A Small Pun Before I Leave You Thinking
A smart teacher simplifies concepts.
A super-smart teacher simplifies students’ anxiety about concepts.
Big difference. One teaches content. The other teaches humans.
So yes—some high-rankers struggle as teachers. Not because they’re too smart, but because they’ve never had to build that staircase from confusion to clarity.
And that staircase, my friend, is the real curriculum.