Those Who Can't

I was just reading an article at Head First Blog, which is all about creating passionate users. I've already commented about passion. In a nutshell, while some people are naturally passionate, I think it's abnormal, and encouraged because we live in a society that expects excellence. You may think this is a good^TM thing, but I have my reservations.

Despite it's generally smarmy manner of presenting items, it has a few good ideas in it. I just don't particularly care for how they say what they say. On the other hand, I can imagine an annoying writing style being nonetheless effective.

If you've had a chance to look at the article, you know it's about teaching. It claims (rightly) that taking many classes doesn't make you a great teacher, that the emphasis of a teacher is really on learning, not on teaching. You're not trying to make the best presentation ever. You're trying to get the students to learn better. The two are distinct. Finally, it asks that teacher be passionate when they teach since students are less likely to be enthusiastic if the teacher isn't.

I've heard teachers complain about the last part. They just aren't enthusiastic personalities. For some reason, passionate people don't seem to understand how people can lack passion, and believe it's just as easy as turning on a switch. Yet, for many introverted people, passion is something that is hard to generate.

I should back up and talk a little more about passion. There are people who are clearly shy, and yet, they have a strong desire or will to get things done. Maybe they're obsessive compulsive. Maybe they just see answers. Maybe they're just plain stubborn. Whatever the reason, they do not have to show outward passion to get things done.

The flip side is also true. A person who exudes confidence and passion may make an effective CEO, but may not be the person who's going to win a Nobel Prize. One might argue that passion can interfere with this. Passionate people may not necessarily be patient people, and patience is often a more important character trait to success than passion. It's just that passion sounds so much more, well, exciting, and gosh darn it, don't we just love exciting people.

Having said that, students, for some reason, like to have teachers that are excited, possibly to the point of unnatural excitement, so happy that you almost want to puke. That excitement, sadly enough, can cover up for deficiencies in teaching. Being enthusiastic about teaching doesn't make you a better teacher, at least, when it comes to explanation, but given two equally gifted explanations, the one that is said more passionately is likely to get a better response.

Understand that our culture seems to value excitement over boredom. Students claim that they should be taught by teachers. At times, they don't feel the burden to learn. I've told students that there are going to be many times that you have what you consider a bad teacher, and yet you still have to learn anyway. To learn in the face of poor teaching is a powerful skill.

Good teaching can, ironically enough, lead to students who don't learn as much. I once had a teaching assistant who was quite a skilled teacher. He had passion. He explained well. Students liked him. If I had taken a poll of students to decide who was the best TA, he'd win hands down (not sure why "hands down", but I just wanted to throw that phrase in).

Yet, for two semesters running, his students had the worst exam average. Why, you might ask. (Go ahead, ask!).

The reason was two-fold. First, and possibly most importantly, the students thought they were learning. This meant (second), fewer students dropped in his class than in any of the other teaching assistants. This meant students who weren't really grasping the material, but thought
they followed what was going on struggled mightily in the exams. Those who had a poor TA probably considered dropping out, leaving only the "better" students behind.

The result? Fewer better students with the bad TA had a better average then numerous so-so (on average) students with the good TA. There's also something to be said about a bad TA forcing students to have to learn on their own if they are to pass the course. (You are about to come to a question, if you've been thinking, and ask where I was in this whole story. Are TAs the only ones who matter? Do students drop because of them and not me? I can't be too sure about that).

I bring this point up because I want to warn about the dangers of "good" teaching. This doesn't mean I advocate bad teaching (as if bad teachers somehow try to be deliberately bad). However, passionate teaching may not always yield the overall results you want, although it may yield happier students.

I recall a story told to me by my brother about some East European table tennis player, who had come to the west. As she was training, she was ordered to do drill after drill. She did not enjoy this at all. Once she came to the West, where she had more control over her training, she discovered that she wasn't improving all that much, and that despite being in a preferable environment, she had to reluctantly admit that the strict East European regimen she went through was actually much better for her game.

Now, as dire as it may sound, I'm not advocating strict teaching, nor bad teaching. All I'm saying is that the signs that you are teaching well is eventually measured by how well the students do. This isn't the best measure, but it's the most important one. You can have uninterested students, who, no matter what you do to excite them, simply refuse to learn or work, and be, in the end, a brilliant teacher. That is, brilliant if you were teaching highly motivated students.

My small piece of advice, at least for the entry, is to get students to do. Too often, I see teachers who explain things in such generalities that the students can't do anything with that information. For example, so often, I see a programming teacher talk about vague programming ideas like top-down design. And yet, they present no examples of such design, and then, on an exam, or on a project, expect the students to become experts.

Perhaps the single most important lesson to learn as a teacher is to use examples liberally. I know this can go too far, as examples themselves can be horrendously boring. Yet, no examples does the students a great disfavor. You want students to remain engaged, and to be involved in the problem solving process.

You'll have to forgive me if I assume you are teaching to science students, or in particular, computer science students. There are plenty of people who talk about how to learn or teach students in English or history, but I find few people willing or able to talk about teaching computer science.

In any case, I shall return to this topic in the future, as it interests me a great deal.