One of the most important lessons I learned during my thirty years of teaching was while it was important to have a solid knowledge of the content some instructional skills may prove just as important, if not more so. Among these skills I rank observation near the top. Without keen observation skills the teacher will miss the ah-hah! moment (otherwise known as when the light bulb goes off inside the student’s head), or the oh-this-crap-is-boring moment, or the I-just-don’t-get-it moment. A lot of valuable time and knowledge is lost when the teacher fails to notice. Writers, too, have to be keen observers. Painting a world readers can relate to, whether…