Teaching

[EC]

I admire teachers. No surprise there, I was one for nearly 10 years, and got rated highly by my students, less so by my superiors. Apparently telling them the truth and making lessons fun was frowned on. Must have missed that memo. 

There is a gentle art to it. Lead the students on, make them think. Discuss the whichness of the why for a full period. That is the civ way. It works. It's polite, respectful, and, with a good teacher, not a time server, gets the kids to think. Kicks up their imagination and creativity. Drives their parents nuts, which is a huge bonus. "Hey, you dump 30 kids on me, I am gonna make damned sure they dump 30 million questions on you."

Then, there is the Army way, where gentle is giving a back hand rather than a fist. I got reminded of the rather stark contrast in teaching styles this morning, while watching a bunch of recruits doing their first drop. Yet there is a harder way of teaching. You beat the idea into the student.

There are some students in the middle east that need teaching. Their education is sorely lacking.

[Bigun]

I admire teachers. No surprise there, I was one for nearly 10 years, and got rated highly by my students, less so by my superiors. Apparently telling them the truth and making lessons fun was frowned on. Must have missed that memo. 

There is a gentle art to it. Lead the students on, make them think. Discuss the whichness of the why for a full period. That is the civ way. It works. It's polite, respectful, and, with a good teacher, not a time server, gets the kids to think. Kicks up their imagination and creativity. Drives their parents nuts, which is a huge bonus. "Hey, you dump 30 kids on me, I am gonna make damned sure they dump 30 million questions on you."

Then, there is the Army way, where gentle is giving a back hand rather than a fist. I got reminded of the rather stark contrast in teaching styles this morning, while watching a bunch of recruits doing their first drop. Yet there is a harder way of teaching. You beat the idea into the student.

There are some students in the middle east that need teaching. Their education is sorely lacking.

 Professional academics for the most part don't like those with real world experience invading their territory.

[alicewonders]

I certainly had a mixed bag of teachers when I was in the school system.  Some I loved, some I hated. 

Some were pure evil, others loved children and making learning fun.  This was back in the days when we got paddlings and some physical punishment was acceptable.  But anyway, the best teachers were the ones that got a certain look in their eye when they taught, a look that said, "I feel passionate about this and you will too!"

I never got a teaching degree, but I have taught a few times.  My favorite was teaching first and second graders Sunday School, and in the summer, Vacation Bible School.  The other time I taught at a college - an evening class in Antiques.  The kids were easy and fun - LOTS of crafts and hands on fun while you learn stuff.  The adults in my Antiques class were a little more challenging - how to not have a boring class talking about antiques......blah, blah, blah.

So I ended up bringing in people I knew that have these terrific collections of things - and collectors are people that have a VAST knowledge of something - so we all learned from that.  And the other thing I did was FIELD TRIPS.  Local museums, historical neighborhoods and houses - seeing history and understanding the tools and everyday items they used for living life before all of the conveniences we have now.

So, I think the best teachers have to love what they do - and not do it because it pays well and has good benefits - but do it because they love sharing knowledge and would do it even for free if they could. 

[alicewonders]

...

There are some students in the middle east that need teaching. Their education is sorely lacking.

There sure are.  They're bullies and they intimidate into submission.  The way you handle a bully is you beat the shit out of them.  They will almost always leave you alone after that.

[EC]

Best thing for me? I taught chemistry and physics. When you'd suddenly see that look in their eyes when they got the concept - it's priceless. You can almost hear the click as it all comes together. 

Makes all the crap worth while.

[massadvj]

Modern pedagogy is based on collaborative learning rather than the traditional competitive learning.  Based on any reasonable standard, it has been an utter failure in terms of outcomes, and yet the liberal teaching establishment continues to cling to it.  In fact, if you look at the academic literature on the subject, you would think that the collaboration model has been nothing short of a phenomenal success.  It is as if the decline in student performance at every level is completely foreign to the researchers in the field.

As a professor myself, I think the collaboration model can work, but it takes a great deal of monitoring -- much more than the average teacher is prepared to do.  Typically, what I see is professors putting students into groups, then going outside for a quick smoke, then returning to close out the class.  The "collaborative learning" system is just being used as an excuse for the teacher to be lazy.  That is why it doesn't surprise me that this model is so preferred by the liberal establishment.

If you want to see a good firsthand example of how collaborative learning fails when attempted at an institutional level, look at the case of the University of California at Santa Cruz.  After a couple of decades of no grading and group learning, they did an objective assessment and found they were taking in the cream of the crop of graduating high school seniors and turning them into functional derelicts.   Even the died in the wool libs at UC Santa Cruz had to admit that their experiment in collaboration had failed.  They went back to grading.

The bottom line is that any system that is not founded on the principle of reward and punishment is destined to fail.

[Bigun]

Modern pedagogy is based on collaborative learning rather than the traditional competitive learning.  Based on any reasonable standard, it has been an utter failure in terms of outcomes, and yet the liberal teaching establishment continues to cling to it.  In fact, if you look at the academic literature on the subject, you would think that the collaboration model has been nothing short of a phenomenal success.  It is as if the decline in student performance at every level is completely foreign to the researchers in the field.

As a professor myself, I think the collaboration model can work, but it takes a great deal of monitoring -- much more than the average teacher is prepared to do.  Typically, what I see is professors putting students into groups, then going outside for a quick smoke, then returning to close out the class.  The "collaborative learning" system is just being used as an excuse for the teacher to be lazy.  That is why it doesn't surprise me that this model is so preferred by the liberal establishment.

If you want to see a good firsthand example of how collaborative learning fails when attempted at an institutional level, look at the case of the University of California at Santa Cruz.  After a couple of decades of no grading and group learning, they did an objective assessment and found they were taking in the cream of the crop of graduating high school seniors and turning them into functional derelicts.   Even the died in the wool libs at UC Santa Cruz had to admit that their experiment in collaboration had failed.  They went back to grading.

The bottom line is that any system that is not founded on the principle of reward and punishment is destined to fail.

Right on Victor! Right on! 

[Oceander]

Best thing for me? I taught chemistry and physics. When you'd suddenly see that look in their eyes when they got the concept - it's priceless. You can almost hear the click as it all comes together. 

Makes all the crap worth while.

I've never done anything so grand as teaching a class; however, I've seen the light-bulb look from my daughter sometimes when I'm helping her with homework and she suddenly "gets it."