Well, I've found if someone is getting hung up on something, usually a good place to start with the basic terminology associated with it. Often a basic misunderstanding leaves the rest of someone's understanding built on a shaky foundation.
One technique I recommend for anything PofF related is to be willing to swap your frame of reference around. In many instructional texts a frame of reference of the aircraft is used. There are reasons for this (a) practicality of diagrams (stationary aerofoil with the airflow drawn as streamlines) and (b) relationship to a wind tunnel. However, there are many places in the study of PofF where it is very useful to learn to visualise the air as being stationary and the aircraft moving through it.
e.g. AoA changes during aircraft attitude changes are much easier to visualise.
In this contrext, its important to get your head around the idea that AoA is related to the difference between where the aircraft is pointing and where its going. (the other component being sideslip).
Try sketching out some diagrams to demonstrate this, and I recommend avoiding straight and level. Straight and level is Satans gift to the the PofF student! Why? Because a number of important definitions are made unclear because SandL is a special case where several important vectors just happen to be lined up with the horizontal or vertical axes, which then gives the impression they are defined in that manner.
e.g. people think the lift is defined in the vertical, drag in the horizontal etc. In this specific case, people can get pitch angle and AoA confused. Make sure you are rock solid on the relationship with flight path angle.
Make sure you appreciate that you may sometimes be considering an angle of attack for one section of the wing, and at other times you may be considering the whole wing, so a reference line that is not necessarily the chord line may be used.
I hope thats something to get you started.
pb
(p.s. Mods maybe this belongs in Tech Log)