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Post by swankivy on Jun 25, 2010 22:23:01 GMT -5
Teach Me
Have you ever been asked to teach someone a skill you possess? Under what circumstances are you a good teacher? Will your personal feelings about your student usually put aside during the teaching, or will they affect how you proceed?
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Post by Corinne on Jun 25, 2010 22:51:14 GMT -5
All the time!
The type of teaching I do is mostly academic. I've been tutoring since I was 14. I've been told I'm very good at it, and I love to do it! I love teaching and finding the way to explain something that will allow a certain person to understand it. I believe it's possible to teach almost anything to anyone if only you can find the right way to get through to them. (Obviously there are reasonable exceptions.) I tutor in almost anything, and even people I don't tutor always come up to me and ask if I can explain things to them, which I gladly do. I just love teaching, which is why I want to do that later on.
I always try to do my best regardless of the circumstances, but I guess I'm probably less effective a teacher when my pupil isn't willing to make an effort to understand. I shouldn't be the one doing all the work—I can't will people to understand if they don't want to. People who are rude and ungrateful and make me waste my time frustrate me, and I'm less inclined to do my best and try to accommodate them if they aren't willing to make an effort. As long as people are willing to learn, though, I always do my best to explain!
I don't generally let my personal feelings for the student affect the process. I've taught things to people I disliked as well as to people I really liked, and I usually just forget my dislike for people if I'm explaining something, unless of course they're being rude or doing something to remind me of why I dislike them. If I do like the person, though, it's a lot of fun and we make a lot of jokes and things are much more informal. I find that sort of a bond usually develops through the teaching, though.
Putting aside tutoring, since I'm good at explaining things, people ask me to explain things all the time. For instance, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I taught my brother to juggle. I just like teaching all sorts of things to people.
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Post by synesthesia on Jun 26, 2010 0:42:41 GMT -5
I did have to teach people about Buddhist symbols and thankga paintings.
And I helped teach children how to read. I also taught the folks who were also teaching Children how to read about Dir en grey and general J rock.
I'm a bit too shy to be teaching people. Currently I'm trying to teach various folks about neurodiversity, but I'm doing a bad job and I don't want folks to feel attacked.
Of course this is on forums and stuff.
Some of my students, 2nd and 3rd graders drove me up a tree. They were all so adorable though. Even when one kid was stabbing a picture of Osama Bin Laden repeatedly.
With red marker.
Which was creepy.
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Post by SHO! on Jun 26, 2010 4:04:54 GMT -5
I could pretty much copy/paste Corinne's post here and it would be absolutely valid for me. Teaching, to me, is a process and one that I enjoy. I like trying to show someone else how my mind wraps around and obstacle and then pick away at their wall of confusion until I understand why they don't seem to be getting the material and then figure out the specific solution to their own understanding. The "Ah-ha!" moment in someone else's face is extremely satisfying.
I'm always being asked to explain things to others and consequently fall into leadership roles when that would never be my first choice nor anything I remotely sought. I actually enjoy reading manuals (not so much for the reading but for the complete understanding of all the capabilities offered to me) and am completely baffled by people that throw away boxes and instructions without a glance then wind up calling tech support... or me.
In an earlier post I wrote about how I sometimes find myself "translating" what one person seems to understand and think of as plainly given into what someone else actually will understand by figuring out how each person is thinking differently about the same thing. The same miscommunication seems to happen between textbook/manual authors and the people that need to read it. Being the go-between is also a satisfying form of teaching to me.
When I was a freshman in college I took a course called "Introduction to Engineering". I was a mechanical/aerospace engineering major and the title of the class seemed appropriate for my very first semester. I soon realized that I was the only freshman in the room and that the class wasn't so much an "Introduction to learning Engineering" as an "Introduction to applying all of the knowledge you've learned these five years into real world engineering projects"! 
The entire class consisted of one engineering project that we were required to give a presentation on at the end of the semester, in front of a panel of veteran engineers. All they gave us was, "Solve the universities parking problem," and set us to form groups.
I sat quietly in the back of the class and watched all of these people, that had been forming bonds for years, begin to group up. My scholarship head was the professor of the class and I thought that when I'd eventually end up as the only one without a group, I could go to her, explain my mistake, and work on a way of existing the class but retaining my required semester hours. Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately in retrospective) a group of three students, also in the back, saw me alone, questioned it, and invited me to their group.
An entering junior and two exiting sophomores, we came up with the idea of a parking garage and had to create a proposal as well as plan it completely from the ground up as if it were really going to be built and maintained using only our specification. We elected the junior as leader and opted to have most of our meetings in the architectural library, the university planning building, and the engineering reference section of the main library. My role in the group all to quickly became defined after quietly reading through a book about zoning laws and explaining what I had read. "You can understand this?!" turned into feeding me technical manuals so I could then teach everyone else what they meant. This turned into figuring out where the next step of our project would lead and the likely places for resources. Which ended with me being pushed into the title of leader and key speaker on presentation night.
The most surreal and kind of embarrassing part came after our presentation (where we were the only group to answer every single question of the panel's and silence the room in our allotted time), sat back down, and our professor thanked us by name and class rank and half the room turned around and every member of my group said in unison, "You're a <i>freshman?!?</i>," and I just bit my lip and nodded as if my "dirty secret" had finally been uncovered.
By the way, we got the highest grade in the class. 
Wow, I've been typing a long time. 
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Post by swankivy on Jun 26, 2010 22:36:40 GMT -5
"You're a freshman?!?," and I just bit my lip and nodded as if my "dirty secret" had finally been uncovered. I always loved this story. Hahahaha. |
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Post by SHO! on Jul 3, 2010 15:41:16 GMT -5
"You're a freshman?!?," and I just bit my lip and nodded as if my "dirty secret" had finally been uncovered. I always loved this story. Hahahaha.  |
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