A teacher who needs to remain superior has misunderstood the assignment.

When a teacher needs to stay ahead, the teaching quietly becomes about maintaining a gap rather than closing one. Information gets held back, questions feel like challenges, and the student’s progress starts to register as a threat. The whole point was to make someone capable, and that aim is incompatible with needing to remain the more capable one.

Notice if you feel a flicker of resistance when someone you have helped does well. Treat that as a signal about you rather than about them. The right response is to teach them more, not less.