That sounds like an amazing teacher. In elementary school I remember being extremely frustrated that art classes weren’t about actually learning to draw/paint, just doing silly things out of papier mâché. I went down the science/engineering route, and it’s only as an adult that I finally took the leap and signed up for proper drawing classes.
It’s been mind expanding to say the least - I thought I spent my whole life seeing, but I realized I saw nothing until I took my first sketching/figure drawing class. Drawing is seeing.
In architecture school, we were taught that drawing is a powerful tool for thinking and analysis, and were drilled with different techiniques to articulate our ideas quickly and concisely in an image. Our professors were heavily influenced by the Bauhaus school in this line of thinking (i.e. Paul Klee[1]).
It’s been mind expanding to say the least - I thought I spent my whole life seeing, but I realized I saw nothing until I took my first sketching/figure drawing class. Drawing is seeing.