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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

#101

Post by beebmam »

lumost wrote: post #19
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.

After just starting a grad program after 12 years in industry. I'd have to disagree. While a large fraction of homework is busy work designed to give the illusion of challenge and rigor - tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam. In CS, a ~4-20 hour project is vastly more representative of how well someone understands the material and could apply it in a re…

>tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam.

I feel a deep sadness reading this. Is your computer science curriculum more accurately described as a software engineering curriculum?

Memorization should be virtually irrelevant on most computer science exams. Proofs should be core to computer science exams; the ability to reason is the most fundamental skill to all scientists, especially for fields which are tightly coupled to mathematics.

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

#102

Post by kazinator »

> But some are an assault on reason, with every word of the assignment creatively misinterpreted. It was never stated which temperature circuit to build or how to prove it works or what level of explanation was necessary. And who’s to say what “build” means?

You have to think like a software engineer. Test first: write the requirements fro the perspective of a test which fails if the requirements are not met.

Rather than dictating irrelevant details of the apparatus that is to be made during the assignment, describe a procedure by which it can be verified to meet the requirements.

"Build a temperature monitor circuit.": what is it monitoring: the temperature of what? Where is that taken? What is the output? Decimal temperature in Celsius to the tenth of a degree? In what range? Or else is there just a control output: is there a hysteresis to turn something on and off like a thermostat? Etc.

"Test it to prove it works." That's a poor way of giving requirements. You need specific test cases. You may have to have specialized equipment on hand that the students can use, like a controlled source of reference temperature.

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

#103

Post by webmobdev »

civilized wrote: post #63
zwkrt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a breed of very narcissistic person in our culture that will always find a way to blame their inadequacies and their mistakes on those around them. In high school, if you are a teacher you have quite a lot of authority in the classroom and so even if your student is oriented in this way, they will just 'not like that teacher'. Helicopter and apologist parents are increasingly an issue but they aren't directl…

I'm sure it's theoretically possible to do poorly in a class because the teacher didn't like you, but statistically, it's got to be one of the most powerful red flags on a human. Steer clear.

I didn't get you; steer clear of who - the teacher or the student?

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

#104

Post by ModernMech »

finexplained wrote: post #6

This perfectly describes my experience as a TA in graduate school. At first I didn't understand why my advisor insisted on being so precise in assignment instructions. Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise. An exception for the new case would be added to the next iteration of the assignments. I only understoo…

> Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise.

The best part is if you do make it more precise by specifying the problem in more detail, they will just not read it and ask questions that you answered explicitly in the assignment.

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

#105

Post by wuyishan »

finexplained wrote: post #6

This perfectly describes my experience as a TA in graduate school. At first I didn't understand why my advisor insisted on being so precise in assignment instructions. Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise. An exception for the new case would be added to the next iteration of the assignments. I only understoo…

Did someone ask the students why they were cheating or creatively interpreted instructions? And then tried to address the underlying problem?

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

#106

Post by caddemon »

zwkrt wrote: post #48
leetrout wrote: post #2

This is TERRIFYINGLY accurate. """ Here’s what will happen: Like most other humans, your students will be lazy and fallible. So many of them will procrastinate and not do the homework. So they won’t learn anything. So they will get a terrible grade on the final. And then they will blame you for not forcing them to do the homework """ This is almost exactly how adjunct teaching went for me. It was not the experience I…

There is a breed of very narcissistic person in our culture that will always find a way to blame their inadequacies and their mistakes on those around them. In high school, if you are a teacher you have quite a lot of authority in the classroom and so even if your student is oriented in this way, they will just 'not like that teacher'. Helicopter and apologist parents are increasingly an issue but they aren't directl…

Many, many TAs are only doing it because it is required for their PhD program (either explicitly or in order to receive funding). Some of them still take the teaching duty seriously, but not all. Having a bad TA is not a good excuse for failing a class I agree, but in my experience most TAs are not looking at their feedback because they're really only in it for the research. And a decent portion of them would deserve the negative feedback.

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

#107

Post by kizer »

Every year I age I respect good teachers more and more. I think it’s one of the hardest jobs. And at the risk of getting some blowback I think much stems from our broken and outdated public education system.

There has to be choice and freedom, both for the students and the teachers. I know I’m speaking vaguely but that’s because I myself can’t articulate a solution. But I know there’s a better way.

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

#108

Post by renewiltord »

Interesting. I grew up in an “exams count only” system that used a 2 decimal point score precision. So if you scored 89.75 at the end, you completed the course with 89.75. It wasn’t bucketed into grades.

There were 4 exams: two quarterlies, a half, and the final.

I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own.

I actually really like articles like this because they have so many unnecessary assumptions:

“Things are this way because students will complain if they suck at things”

The unstated assumptions are that students in this schooling system mostly have external loci of control.

The second thing is that courses are designed in an adding-epicycles manner based on the least reasonable member of the previous class. That is, it is a cost function that aims to minimize the failure of the greatest idiot which implicitly leads to it adding cost for the smart guy.

So you have built a schooling system optimized for the greatest idiot who believes someone else is responsible for all of his failures. This actually explains why so many college students here are like they are.

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

#109

Post by Clubber »

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…

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

― Mark Twain

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

#110

Post by brabel »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #96
brabel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's fine now, it was fine back then also.

the # if people in the US with glucose monitors says differently.

what you're saying is just that maybe it's not fine now as it was not fine then (as usual, this depends on the particular person).
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