

Teach Like You're the Student - icey
http://steveblank.com/2010/08/10/teach-like-youre-the-student/

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kmak
One of my advisors liked to bring up this quote:

The first time a teacher teaches something, the teacher learns. The second
time a teacher teaches something, the students learn. After that nobody
learns!

~~~
virinvictus
So, the lesson is: teach them something twice, and then ignore the students. I
like it.

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yequalsx
I think the reverse is more accurate. When learning something study as if you
have to explain it to someone else. If you can explain it to someone who
doesn't have a lot of knowledge in the particular subject you are studying
then you really know it. The converse is definitely not true though.

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wccrawford
I was bored to tears in high school and college. If I taught like I was
teaching myself, the majority of the class would be left behind and we'd all
fail.

No thanks.

The real moral here is to empathize with students and then teach.

~~~
yequalsx
I teach mathematics at a community college. I definitely don't teach like I'm
the student. A large majority of my students don't like mathematics and don't
want to be in the class. If I taught like I was the students only a few people
would pass. Few of my students have the desire to know, to learn that I had as
a student.

I think his advice best applies to a group of students who care about learning
and want to learn. It doesn't apply to those who don't possess these
qualities.

~~~
sanderjd
Out of curiosity, if this is the case, why should more than a few people in
the class pass? Do you believe that shoving the material down these unwilling
students' throats in such a way that they are able to pass results in a higher
portion of them gaining and retaining the knowledge than would have otherwise?
To me it sounds like very few in this class are interested in or successful at
learning your material, so what is the definition of "passing" a class?

~~~
yequalsx
It's a very good question to ask what it means to pass a class. It's also a
difficult one to answer but I'll try.

More than a few people should pass because that's what the Board of Regents,
the college president, the Governor, the Legislature, and society at large
want and they pay my salary. This isn't a flippant statement. In my state one
of the Board of Regents wants my pay to be dependent upon how many people pass
my class. Every year the president of the college sends a report to the
Department of Mathematics and asks what we are doing to improve the passing
rate.

The state wants three things,

1\. we must accept anyone who applies 2\. we should pass almost everyone who
takes our classes 3\. everyone who passes should 'know' the material

You can have any two of these things but not all three. I have a lot of
pressure from the administration and so my perception of what skills it takes
to pass has been a decreasing function for the past 10 years.

Almost all of my colleagues give point based on things that a well trained
chimp can do. They give points for attendance. They give points for turning in
homework. (The homework doesn't have to be correct to get the points.) My
colleagues try their hardest to give students enough points so that they can
reach the magical 70% thresh hold. Some have lowered this magical thresh hold
to 60%.

What it means to pass a class is a level of achievement that most people in
the class can reasonably achieve. It has nothing to do with knowledge, skills,
or anything that really matters in terms of learning. Will 70% of the students
pass with this grading scheme, with these assignments, with this level of work
and effort? If the answer is yes then you've got a good idea of what it means
to pass a class.

This has bad, long term consequences for society writ large. I'm aware of this
and I try the best I can to reach as many students as possible.

I definitely don't teach my students as if I was in the audience. I'm an
outlier in terms of mathematical talent and interest. It would be insane for
me to teach as if I was in the class.

~~~
aprrrr
It seems like the meat of the course and how you grade it are somewhat
orthogonal. Have you ever tried teaching it for real, however you think the
semester would best be spent, then just curve/inflate/whatever the grades to
get the desired distribution at the end?

~~~
yequalsx
They are orthogonal to a large degree. What you say happens quite frequently.
Mostly, I'm teaching to 3 or 4 students. That's how many are interested on
average.

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omrisiri
This advice should be taken with a grain of salt. It all comes down to the
level of the instructor vs the level of the students.

If i taught like i were the student, most students would be left far behind
probably trying to figure out how i got from point a to b.

With that said, on occasion (during advanced courses) i can really go all the
way with the students and challenge them and sometimes even myself, it's a
rare synergy between the student and teacher.

In any situation teaching is an act - it all about enthusiasm - even when its
the most boring subject , you need to make the students feel excited about
learning it.

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rimantas
"That the stupid pupils were these! I explained once—they did not get it. I
explained second time—they still did not get it. I explained third time—I
myself got it, but they did not!"

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InclinedPlane
The biggest mistake in teaching is not providing enough context.

So often teaching (or documentation) devolves into mere description. As if
detailing every part of an automobile is a good way of teaching how one works.
The human brain is a wondrous thing, so even with such a horrible method of
teaching eventually smart people will pick things up. But it's a very
inefficient and error prone method.

The right way to teach is to start with an abstract, low-fidelity model and
then build upon that. Once students have a good mastery of the model then you
can delve down into fine-grained specifics (how each component works, for
example) and only then can you evolve the model into a more accurate
representation.

That's why good teachers are so rare. Because it's easy to "teach" a complex
system by describing each component in detail, but it's harder to come up with
a series of models from low-fidelity to high-fidelity that bootstrap up from
zero knowledge to expertise.

