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Things I learned from teaching

claytonwramsey.github.io

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Re: Things I learned from teaching

#31

Post by lysecret »

sethammons wrote: post #28
lysecret wrote: post #22

I used to work as a teacher in a kind of bootcamp. Over the years my my view on teaching has changed massively. I think there are only two generic things and the rest is situation dependent. - There is just no way around the struggle. The students have to struggle. Your job is not to take the struggle away but to show them why it is worth struggling and instil the belief that they can do it. - The most important teac…

> Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of this I taught in an inner city title one school. While it would have made teaching those who showed up easier, I'd bet that over half the students would not show up without forced attendance. We had under 2% of students who would go on to graduate a four year college and something like an 80% transitory rate (meaning 20% would complete all four years at the school - thi…

Oh, first of all, I truly respect this kind of teaching work. My only experience is in graduate or post-graduate level teaching. So really don't what is ideal in your situation.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#32

Post by kettleballroll »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #23

The author writes about himself: > Hi! I'm a PhD student studying computer science at Rice University. This means that we are on the same career path (I am currently an assistant professor in theoretical CS in Europe). I wish you of course best of luck! Here is the harshest truth about teaching I learned during my PhD: If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure. This sounds crue…

Just as a counterpoint: this very much depends. I probably spent at least a year (probably more) of my PhD (in Europe) just teaching a class I built up from the ground up myself. I barely got any research done the first year I gave that class, and every subsequent year it still took a large chunk of my time. It's part of the reason I spent a total of 7 years doing a PhD (which is long, considering I already had an MSc), during 5 of which I taught my class, and grew it from 10 students in the first year to 200 in my last. But I don't consider that time wasted. I had a blast and found that teaching helped me understand the fundamentals of my fields at an extremely deep level that I'd never reached otherwise. It didn't improve my research output, but I feel that the soft skills and understanding of fundamentals was a real advantage. My future career also didn't suffer, I'm now working as researcher at a FAANG AI lab.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#33

Post by jskherman »

lysecret wrote: post #22

I used to work as a teacher in a kind of bootcamp. Over the years my my view on teaching has changed massively. I think there are only two generic things and the rest is situation dependent. - There is just no way around the struggle. The students have to struggle. Your job is not to take the struggle away but to show them why it is worth struggling and instil the belief that they can do it. - The most important teac…

Seconded. On this, I think the book "A Mind for Numbers" by Barbara Oakley summed up the lessons when it comes to learning the best. The effort/struggle to learn a topic is a signal to the brain that this particular information is salient and worth remembering; like some sort of feedback/anchor. People more should reframe and be thinking on how should they approach a subject to make getting to "the click" and understanding faster (not necessarily easier).

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#34

Post by xanderlewis »

nicoburns wrote: post #25
sieste wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many universities have almost a "no child left behind" policy. That's true, it's difficult to encourage independent learning at undergrad level and we often end up hand holding and spoon feeding material like in high school. This is partly because it's an easy fix to avoid the most negative student evaluations from the "I won't put in the work and when I fail it's the teacher's fault" types. There aren't many of th…

IMO the more fundamental problem is that the examinations typically won’t measure how much students have learnt independently. If you want to do well in most university exams, then you need to pay very close attention to exactly what the professor wants you to learn and make sure you’re learning exactly that. It is possible to design exams that actually grade people on their knowledge of the subject in general, but m…

I’m sure it depends greatly on subject, but my experience has been quite the opposite. If you do even a modicum of learning ‘outside the classroom’ many exam questions suddenly become a routine triviality. If you learn only what the lecturer intends you directly to learn, you end up at a point where the exam is optimally difficult.

Looking at textbooks and other universities’ lecture notes on your own is so effective it almost feels like cheating!

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#35

Post by sethammons »

lysecret wrote: post #31
sethammons wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forced attendance is imo the worst symptom of this I taught in an inner city title one school. While it would have made teaching those who showed up easier, I'd bet that over half the students would not show up without forced attendance. We had under 2% of students who would go on to graduate a four year college and something like an 80% transitory rate (meaning 20% would complete all four years at the school - thi…

Oh, first of all, I truly respect this kind of teaching work. My only experience is in graduate or post-graduate level teaching. So really don't what is ideal in your situation.

fwiw I've never heard of forced attendance post secondary; attendance is a legal requirement in k-12.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#36

Post by yodsanklai »

bluenose69 wrote: post #29

Here are some things I tell young professors: 1. The students are not like you. For you, the topic is fascinating, and something you've pondered for much of your adult life. For the average student, the topic is moderately interesting, and likely quite confusing, in the first exposure that is this class. 2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and th…

> 2. Teach to the middle of the class. Be aware that the weakest students will be perplexed much of the time, and the strongest will be bored.

True for the weakest students, but it's always possible to give harder material/exercises to the strongest students. And it doesn't even take much time for the teacher because these students are more autonomous. I only taught CS and maths, but it's very easy to keep the good students busy.

I personally like teaching CS lab classes. The key is to design projects with gradual difficulty. Even the weakest students should manage to complete a few tasks.

But overall, I think that heterogeneity makes teaching much more complicated that what it could be, especially when basic pre-requisites aren't met. It's a bit heartbreaking when you get students which are obviously losing their time and money.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#37

Post by yodsanklai »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #23

The author writes about himself: > Hi! I'm a PhD student studying computer science at Rice University. This means that we are on the same career path (I am currently an assistant professor in theoretical CS in Europe). I wish you of course best of luck! Here is the harshest truth about teaching I learned during my PhD: If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure. This sounds crue…

> If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure.

This is good advice. And this is true even once you become a professor. All time spent on teaching will go against your career progression. Even if you're tenured and don't care about promotion, you'll feel like an imposter in your department if you're not somewhat competitive research wise.

Generally speaking, there's no recognition in teaching in general, and at university level it's often not even considered as a job by itself.

Maybe it's different in Asia, but that was my experience in the western countries where I worked.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#38

Post by denton-scratch »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #23

The author writes about himself: > Hi! I'm a PhD student studying computer science at Rice University. This means that we are on the same career path (I am currently an assistant professor in theoretical CS in Europe). I wish you of course best of luck! Here is the harshest truth about teaching I learned during my PhD: If you are focusing on teaching too much, you are setting yourself up for failure. This sounds crue…

Bret Deveraux[0] did a really good blogpost on the difference between the tenure track and the teaching track for postgrad students.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2023/04/28/collections-academic-ranks-exp...

/me not an academic at all. I had no idea it was such a struggle.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#39

Post by nerdponx »

sethammons wrote: post #35
lysecret wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, first of all, I truly respect this kind of teaching work. My only experience is in graduate or post-graduate level teaching. So really don't what is ideal in your situation.

fwiw I've never heard of forced attendance post secondary; attendance is a legal requirement in k-12.

Some classes have an attendance requirement, but usually that's set by the department or the individual instructor.

Re: Things I learned from teaching

#40

Post by avg_dev »

Definitely thought this was an interesting article. Recalled some of my own thoughts on “struggle” as a way to learn. And am somehow interested in the subject of pedagogy too. Also a software developer. Thanks for the article.
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