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Comment by bluenose69 | Hacker News Reader

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 the strongest will be bored. This range is hard for you to comprehend, given your path. Note that the range is not something you can alter. It is established by the university Registrar, not by you and also not by the students.

3. Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material. Be direct, and be personal. "The next topic is" will not motivate students as much as "Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.

4. Make the decision to enjoy your time with the students.

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> Now we ready for the exciting part" or "This next bit is what I like best about this topic", etc.

Personal excitement for the material is one piece, but it’s not enough. The most important thing a teacher should do is help the students internalize *why* they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.

Baking shows don’t start off telling the history of the maillard reaction, they show you the delicious cake you’re going to make. Then you make the cake. Then (if it’s a class and not the food network) you learn the important details.

Teaching is storytelling. The main character is the student. What challenge will they overcome? How will they grow as a result? If the teacher makes them hungry to know the answer, then students will not just tolerate the information, they’ll seek it out, challenge it, and ask for more.

Love this. My version is wanting to know what problem I would face on my own that would lead me to independently generate the solution I'm about to learn. That gives me motivation and context for the information so I can form a complete orientation in the problem space.

I completely agree.

A problem is probably the most classic storytelling device. “A heroes journey” gives the hero a problem to solve and then the climax is when they solve it.

> The most important thing a teacher should do is help the students internalize why they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.

Depending on the topic there is often no "why". Most classes a student takes are required and they have absolutely zero interest in them and they will willfully forget them as soon as the semester is over

There is always a "why", else what would be the use of teaching the subject in the first place, even to enthusiastic students?

OP's point is that helping the students understand the "why" might spark interest in them. Even if you reach one kid, you will have achieved your intended result.

The why the course is useful to know may not actually ever be relevant to the students why they’re taking the class, and no amount of informing the student how it’s useful will assist them. Knowing firsthand the value of tax knowledge doesn’t mean I have any level of enthusiasm about my taxes…

Btw, for your baking example: the great British bake off is a wildly popular show and yet almost none of the people I know who are fans care to even try to learn baking themselves. I just don’t think it’s a think that happens to any degree you think it does.

> the great British bake off is a wildly popular show and yet almost none of the people I know who are fans care to even try to learn baking themselves.

You're missing the point of teaching anything. Teaching is (literally) the act of grooming someone to be receptive to an idea. It's different from training, which is the act of coaching someone into doing something.

When the day comes where one of those fans does try to bake something, everything they saw on the show is going to resonate in a way it wouldn't for someone without the exposure.

I don't bake, but I now know two ways in which greasy meat leads to a soggy bottom.

Most people go to college for training; they could not care less about receptivity to ideas. There is this myth that college is about expanding one's mind and worldview. It is not. It is about improving and ensuring one's economic class. Only professors forsake a job in the real world for these ideals. Everybody else is there to secure their spot in the middle class, and they don't care about superfluous information

> Most people go to college for training; they could not care less about receptivity to ideas

And they come out of it disappointed that they don't actually know how to do anything.

> There is this myth that college is about expanding one's mind and worldview.

I used to think that was a myth too. So much so I did it twice. College is wasted on the young.

It took decades of experience for me to recognize how much of my college experience consisted of being fed blatant lies meant to foster critical thought.

> And they come out of it disappointed that they don't actually know how to do anything.

Mostly because, as the OP post points out, the lecturing model is very bad at teaching most things. College's never innovate

> what would be the use of teaching the subject in the first place, even to enthusiastic students?

This is something which you should always ask yourself in a class. What use is this class?

Usually the "why" is: "nobody would take this class unless we forced them to, and the English department would starve to death without forced pre-requisites"

> Even if you reach one kid, you will have achieved your intended result

If you reach 1 kid in a class of 30 you have objectively failed

There’s always a reason.

“I want to learn something just to learn something” isn’t the best reason, but it is A reason.

I mention in another post that even if the reason doesn’t interest you personally, the teacher still should make a strong case and you should walk away knowing why someone (even if not you) could do, if only they had the knowledge.

> “I want to learn something just to learn something” isn’t the best reason,

Why?

Films exist without motive, plot, climax, or story. Some people love these films. If that’s the kind of story that you seek, then the teacher doesn’t need to lift a finger. Good for you.

For the rest of us, we need to want a hole before we learn how to use a drill. And that’s okay too.

At least some of the time the reason is the canon of that subject requires it and you either care about that subject or you don't. If it's a distribution requirement the school imposes or the student simply doesn't know yet what they enjoy studying and are still major-shopping, there isn't necessarily much a professor can do about that. It's not like cooking. Everyone has to eat. Not everyone needs to become a chemist, but if at some point you think you might want to become one, you're going to have to learn common foundational material that all chemists must know to succeed as chemists. If you end up not actually becoming a chemist, it will never be useful to you.

Or if you're pre-med, it still may never be useful to you to learn all the different ways atoms can arrange themselves into molecules unless you're going to someday do novel drug research, but medical school admissions and clinical licensing boards have not yet figured out a way to craft pre-requisites based on the specific unknowable future paths of individual applicants and they have to require everything that might be needed by any kind of doctor.

> It's not like cooking. Everyone has to eat.

Not everyone likes cake (believe it or not). But everyone understands why someone else might want a cake.

It’s a storytellers job to make the connection or to provide a surrogate. Most people have never been orphans, but Little orphan Annie’s character acts as surrogate through which the viewer can understand the orphan world.

You’re right that having more context of your audience and having shared interests help, but you can still tell a story to someone you’ve never met.

> *why* they’re learning the material. What they can do with it.*

If the honest answer is that of the few students that every do anything with the material, those will be academics who go on to just study the material more, that should be articulated too.

"In this course we will be descending into a branch of mathematics that hitherto has found no practical application. Perhaps some of you will go on to find some."

> 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.

I've been quite curious how to "divide and conquer" the problem by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the perplexed and lagging. It may save teacher time for teaching the middle group while also teaching the genius what it is to explain something so intuitive to someone who doesn't. But it may backfire ..

Upper-year students often work as teaching assistants which is something to this effect. That is, if they hold tutoring sessions or office hours and not just do grading.

>> by weaponizing the bored genius into teaching the perplexed and lagging.

This seems like a great idea but should be used very sparingly. Your "bored genius" isn't necessarily a great teacher, and that's not their job anyway. I've found you're better to give them more challenging options. If they want to be bored that's on them; if they pursue it they'll likely do it independently.

I agree but there's a huge value in showing them how diverse can brains be. As a smart person, it's very important that they tame their own needs and open their mind a bit too.

That said, making them chasing challenges is also a great thing.

> It may save teacher time for teaching the middle group while also teaching the genius what it is to explain something so intuitive to someone who doesn't.

So, really no benefit for the genius and all the benefit for the weaker ones and the teacher who does not have to run their patience thin.

No, I think giving the genius a challenge that they came for is the best way to go about it. If you have none, that's fine, let the genius discover things on their own, they were almost certainly doing so anyways and its best to not get in their way.

Great ideas.

I sneak in advanced things into lectures and preface it with "for students that are more advanced or have more prior knowledge in the subject..." I usually see the more advanced students perk up and the other students exhale and zone out a bit to rest their brain. Seems to work fairly well.

> Expose the students to your enthusiasm for the material.

This makes a huge difference to me. There were subjects that were exceedingly boring and difficult to me at first but I managed to find joy in them because teachers were so enthusiastic about them it was like they were filled with childlike wonder and it inspired me to give it a chance instead of just going through the motions.

I've had teachers who seemed to be there just for the paycheck and it made me be there just for the grades too, thoroughly depressing.

My student life has been an awful boring existence because of number 2. There was nothing more frustrating than going to school. A few sentences were enough for me to understand concepts that were explained during several weeks.

Are these technical university level courses you are talking about? If so, you should just be taking higher level courses.

That's a long time I'm out of school. The truth is you should read books about subjects you're interested in to solve a lack of understanding on one subject, and from there teach yourself anything you want, if you were in my situation. What I did is taking the highest level course I could find on X subject, and trying to understand from other lower level sources the high level concepts I couldn't understand from intuition by the sole reading of the high level syllabus.

This is good advice - it is good to keep all of these things in mind.

I would add: Let them see you sweat a bit. When they see you are working hard to make a great class for them, they too put in more work.

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