Things I learned from teaching (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#61

Post by kbolino » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

Edman274 wrote: post #10

throwaway2037 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people thinking teaching is any harder than any other job that requires a university education? You get trained; you get mentored; you get regular professional improvement. And, the bit about low wages always makes me chuckle. Everyone overlooks the lifetime earnings of a public school teacher: It is usually very good (much better than most boring office jobs), when you include the value of all benefits, inclu…

If the benefits and wages were so much better than "boring office jobs" then why would there be a teacher shortage in the absence of onerous requirements for entry? Why is there a teacher shortage if the pay and benefits are so good?

Though it isn't true in all states, there are onerous requirements for entry in many places. I grew up and went to college in Maryland, and the education program basically takes over your 4-year degree process. Despite enjoying tutoring and student-teaching, I balked for multiple reasons and left the program to get an ordinary BS degree.

Among those reasons were:

- the education department at my college wasted my time one too many times; academic infighting made it unnecessarily difficult to get a good advisor and complete the program

- the expectation for me to pay full-time tuition in my last year even though it would be spent working (without pay)

- seeing my "peers" get Bs and Cs for D- and F-level work in education classes and realizing the standards were way too low

- the excessive dictating of which "electives" I had to take outside of education, which frequently put me in the dump classes where the professors had no respect for the students

- yes, the less-than-stellar pay and benefits (and MD is one of the best states in the country for teacher pay!) and mandatory union membership (pre-SCOTUS ruling against it) that would follow once I jumped through these hoops

- the feeling that, even if I set aside all of these concerns, I would ultimately have no autonomy; I was already seeing that many teachers (including at the college level) just want to coast through their jobs and have not just the curriculum and textbooks but also the assignments, exams, and even daily lectures handed to them by the district, and the same districts not wanting teachers to go off-script for liability reasons too

Obviously, some of these elements were particular to my circumstances and experiences and not required by the state, but the program itself was, and even in better circumstances, it still requires a large commitment of time and money.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#62

Post by michaelt » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:24 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #40

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

The lecture-tutorial pedagogical model used in universities is called scholasticism and dates back to the middle ages. Books were very expensive, so in the lectures, the lecturer would just read out the relevant text for students to copy down, word for word. (In the more prestigious English universities, lecturers are still called 'Readers', and students say that they're 'reading' History or Computer Science rather t…

I have always wanted a tutorial ONLY environment for my future Physics study. I believe I can grind through the textbooks by myself but I need some tutor, preferably a PHD to answer my batched questions and guide me through exercises I cannot figure out. Do PHDs of good universities do this kind of things? What hourly rate should I expect?

There are one-to-one tutoring services that target university students, and I doubt they'd have any problem with a paying customer who wasn't a student. Some of them offer tutors who have PhDs.

From what I can find on Google, prices range from "affordable for a student" to "affordable for a student with rich parents if they only need a few hours".

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#63

Post by aleph_minus_one » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:35 PM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #59

"some professors can be downright mean to their students" I've had far too many teachers like this. They should be weeded out, fired immediately, and never allowed in the profession again.

> "some professors can be downright mean to their students"

> I've had far too many teachers like this. They should be weeded out, fired immediately, and never allowed in the profession again.

These were often the professors from whom good student learned a whole lot.

The best example that I can give is a description that my father gave of one of his (former) professors: "He was an excellent teacher - but only for those students who could handle his teaching style."

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#64

Post by aleph_minus_one » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

F00Fbug wrote: post #50

Great article! I taught full-time for a while and progressed to program coordinator and eventually department chair. I hated the bureaucracy and ended up leaving. I hang on as an adjunct and still teach one or two sections a semester. My favorite is an intro to programming class using Python - I love to see the lightbulb come on when it all falls into place. That's usually a couple of students out of 25. I don't get…

> I don't get why students don't come to office hours - hardly anyone ever does.

Honest answer from my student time: because as a student you are/were learning and solving exercise sheets nearly all the time. Thus you typically didn't have time to come to the office hours.

Before you are able to ask questions about lecture topics, you better first understand where your understanding problem is and which questions you actually have to ask. This requires quite some time that you typically don't have - because of learning of solving exercise sheets.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#65

Post by nso95 » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

>The easiest fix is to make office hours available on the same day that assignments are due, so that I can be available when students are working on the assignment.

Probably not a great idea. You're going to be overbooked when all of your students show up last minute.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#66

Post by eszed » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #41

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

The lecture-tutorial pedagogical model used in universities is called scholasticism and dates back to the middle ages. Books were very expensive, so in the lectures, the lecturer would just read out the relevant text for students to copy down, word for word. (In the more prestigious English universities, lecturers are still called 'Readers', and students say that they're 'reading' History or Computer Science rather t…

Long time ago when I was a student, some teachers tried what now has fancy name "flipped learning". The usual result was that only few students done the reading and what not before the class. They usually put in only so much effort so that they can get point for participation, but not enough for discussion or workshop to not effectively amount to first encounter with the topic.

That was also my experience with that experiment, as a professor, about a decade ago. Educational ideas always work in the ideal (imagined) environment, but not so well in the (actual) classroom.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#67

Post by aleph_minus_one » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:44 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #58

bluenose69 wrote: post #52

I've learned that many students lose interest about 2 slides into a presentation. The solution is simple. Don't use presentations. Spend your time with the students by talking with them. Use the board for sketches, mathematical development, etc. This forces you to go slowly enough that students can copy your work, which is basically how people learn. Since you will be talking with the students (with the lights turned…

I dunno if it's the biggest myth about education, but it's gotta be in the top 3: The myth that you can stand in front of someone, speak some words on some topic, and all humans will automatically absorb the words, retain them, correctly make all relevant logical deductions from these words, retain all of this for the next several decades, and no particular effort need to be put into the specific words used and no ex…

> I do not know where we get this idea.

The people who become professors typically love(d) listening to lectures, and indeed learned a lot from them.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#68

Post by markus_zhang » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 3:46 PM UTC

n4r9 wrote: post #55

markus_zhang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that's not feasible for me. I wonder if it's easy to find PHDs who are willing to do this. But I know good PHDs are generally very busy.

They can sometimes become less busy in the face of a sufficiently lucrative offer.

Yeah I'm trying to figure out a good price for both sides. I'll probably try locals first. We do have a couple of good universities -- definitely not MIT/Berkeley league but I don't need it.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#69

Post by dav_Oz » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #22

Great article! From my own teaching experience, > I'm not a hundred percent certain of the exact mechanisms of how, yet. In my experience, I learn the most when I struggle; if a student can shortcut through all the hard parts on, for example, and assignment, they're not going to learn very much. On the flip side, when most students struggle, they just give up. Somehow I need to make assignments which thread the needl…

Never heard of the "learning zones" as a concept but from my own teaching experience after a while I was aware if I made my lecture too accessible and easy to follow through my students got overconfident and didn't fully engage with the problems I gave them as an assignment.

On the other hand if I deliberately left little things out to later test them, they became more engaged because they knew I only gave them the necessary tools but they had to work out the little things by themselves. The students were more on the edge and this resulted in better engagement overall.

It was fascinating to experiment with it because my expectations of hard/intermediate/easy problems were at times wildly off.

And surely, there are adaptations at play here, if one is used to discomfort in order to learn hopefully the danger zone gets smaller with time. Sometimes I feel - especially for younger folks coming fresh from high school - the zone between comfort and danger is pretty small as they got habituated on cramming which is essentially all danger zone.

Re: Things I learned from teaching (2023)

#70

Post by watwut » Wed, Aug 14, 2024, 4:13 PM UTC

gavmor wrote: post #54

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Additionally, there is the problem that one of the two pupils of the pair - is lazy or - is a lone wolf or - has a very different style of thinking from the other, which the other one cannot make use of

This dynamic is not impossible to overcome. It's often as simple as reminding students that we are responsible for one another's success by shifting the goal from "finish the exercise" to "ensure we've both learned how to finish the exercise". "Lone wolves" and "lazy" students, I've found, often warm up when given 1:1 attention of peers.

> It's often as simple as reminding students that we are responsible for one another's success by shifting the goal from "finish the exercise" to "ensure we've both learned how to finish the exercise".

Then it ends up with faster student trying to explain to the slower one and failing. While the slower one still does not really have an option to do it independently and think it through, until they get home. This pair thing is great if you are the faster one or the one with better initial knowledge. It really does not work well if you are the weaker one.

I have been both on occasion, sometimes I was behind and other times advanced. Classes where I worked alone gave me much more then the ones where I was paired with someone better. When I was paired with someone slower, it was good for my ego and I remembered more from trying to explain (if I did that).