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Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

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Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#231

Post by busyant »

nicolas_t wrote: post #114
busyant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see what’s sad about that, other than maybe the disappointment of losing naiveté. From my own experience, some sadness is due to treating a few people with disdain in my youth. At times, I was an arrogant, pissy teen. I wish I could make amends, but some of those people are gone.

Luckily some of those people might have recognized themselves doing the same thing when they were younger and accepted your behaviour for nothing more than youth.

Thank you. That makes me feel a little better!

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#232

Post by b112 »

turkishmonky wrote: post #196
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids. Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids

Some behaviour is just plain borked, but other behaviour is just more nuanced.

An example, some kids are extroverted, others intro. What works for one, may not be the same for another.

You may need to constantly work with an extrovert, so they are eventually, as an adult, be in control of their own exuberance. And with an introvert, work with them, trying to help them expand thier ability to interact.

An ability for both to live in a shared society.

But imagine a parent who was an extrovert, was constantly upset at, as a child, being told to calm down, or stop asking 1000 questions per second. Or even, just "give another a moment to talk".

So they, with an extrovert, do not do such things. And the extrovert does not learn control, and dicipline, and to give others some space sometimes, and becomes less capable of interacting with others as an adult.

Of course, this is a poor example, and poorly phrased, but I hope my point comes across.

We should focus more strongly on what is correct for the child, not how a parent may have misapplied childhood lessons to ourselves. For those lessons may be right for your child, even if not for oneself.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#233

Post by commandlinefan »

> every word of the assignment creatively misinterpreted

OTOH when I took operating systems I got an assignment that said “implement a job scheduler, using FIFO, LIFO or round-robin job scheduling”. So I picked FIFO, got it working and I had time left over so I thought, “what the hell? I’ll do LIFO too”. So I did, and I still had time so I took a crack at round-robin, but I didn’t have time so I turned it what I had, proud of myself for going above and beyond.

I got back a 66 on the assignment. I asked why and he said, “you didn’t even attempt round robin”. I pulled up the assignment where it VERY CLEARLY said “or” and he said, “well, it should have been obvious I meant ‘and’”.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#234

Post by bee_rider »

yodsanklai wrote: post #18
beebmam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a TA, I convinced my professor to stop giving graded assignments. it was obvious on tests who had done the assignments and who hadn't.

Graded assignments are useful to give feedback to students. And more importantly they force students to work regularly and not wait for the last minute to study.

I think it is mostly the latter. At least -- I rarely got useful feedback other than a little x (best case it would be on the error, more likely on the questions).

Personally, when grading I keep a file of all my feedback so I can easily copy-paste it into their feedback files (since everything is digital nowadays). For a given assignment, usually only a handful of mistakes are made (repeated by each student). If anything, having the file makes my grading more consistent -- same points for the same error.

I'm under the impression that this is a not-unpopular system, but try as I might, I cannot get anyone else to adopt it.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#236

Post by superposeur »

As an instructor, agree about everything but will add that I try to keep a positive framing.

That people procrastinate and need incentives is human nature — no more use bemoaning this than bemoaning politics. The job of instructor is precisely to enforce a system of rules and incentives while not being too dogmatic about them that the class turns into a grind while promoting enthusiasm for learning while creating inspired course content, while balancing all this with the instructor’s own scholarship priorities. It’s a tall order and very few people do it well.

That mastery is difficult and subtle does not distinguish pedagogy from other professions, but what is different is that every shmo off the street remembers being a student, so thinks they know the secret formula for pedagogy.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#237

Post by svnt »

fallingknife wrote: post #191
brightball wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Your point of view as a parent is often very different than as a teen/20-ager. Different priorities. You’re suddenly aware of all of the things in society influencing your kids. You’re very aware when things your read online don’t match up with reality and especially with math. It’s just life experience. I don’t know many parents who look back at their younger years thinking, “I had it all figured out back then.…

Adults don't look at it and call it BS immediately, either. If anything kids are better at it. e.g. we all knew that the moral panic over violent video games was a bunch of BS.

I think these are two different classes of issues you’re comparing.

Kids are perhaps often intuitively good at evaluating the severity of unintended consequences.

Adults are much better at being aware of deliberate efforts to take advantage of developmental stages and tendencies.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#239

Post by punnerud »

I feel the same with Wikipedia, the Norwegian articles are often better than the English ones because they often are shorter and to the point.

I don’t want to read 2000 words for something that could be explained in under 100.

Have been thinking of a 200word limit per article version of Wikipedia.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#240

Post by jackallis »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #93
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

On the other hand (as a father of two) I find myself thinking about how my dad handled situations, comparing how I just handled it, and going, “wow did he have that backwards” haha. Not all the time of course and like you I have definitely come to appreciate how tough it is to make the “right” call, but we certainly have learned some things. One thing Boomer parents were really bad about - at least in my experience -…

dang this that we do - "forcing toddlers to eat everything and then they get dessert as a direct reward (which often ignores teaching them how to read signs that they’re full). The list goes on"

sometimes you do need another perspective. you go through the process without even thing about harm process could be causing.

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