on feeling stupid as a bag of hammers

[rmd]

nothing makes me reconsider my abilities and knowledge like considering how to take some subject i think i know about and crushing it into a 8 or 10 session class suitable for high school students.

i'm thinking about putting together a class for the MIT High School Studies Program, but not sure what to do. i could easily do a "how the internet works" class, i guess.

i did teach a basic circuits class for the HSSP one-shot class "SPLASH" program back when i was in college, but i'd have to re-learn the details on much of that before i felt comfortable teaching it. i could teach something non-technical, but i'm not sure what.

definitely, there's something about trying to put together a class and explicitly teach people things that's down there with jobhunting as a thing that brings out my "i know nothing, i'm stupid as a bag of hammers" self-doubt.

must ponder how and why this is so...

Comments

[skreeky]

Doing is different from teaching.

You walk every day. Of course. Try explaining to someone how to walk.

When you've been doing something a long time, you do it as a whole. You know its complexities intuitively, and aren't actively thinking about them anymore. The details that explained all the little components of the subject are easily lost in time, because once you grasp the whole, they aren't as important.

But when you teach, you are taking that whole and breaking it down again, into little chunks that can be explained and built on and hooked together until you get back to whole. Suddenly, you need all those little details that haven't come up in ages. And you can't think of them.

I am so glad that I kept all my notes from every class I ever took. Because now, when I teach, I steal those lectures. I look back at how I was taught, how my teacher broke it down, the details that seemed important at the time, the vocabulary, the logical sequence of information nuggets.

If you don't have notes from a class you took, see if you can find an intro text to skim, or someone else's teaching materials online. It's not your knowledge of the topic that's lacking - it's shifting from high level knowledge back to low level knowledge that creates a block.

My Dad always used to say "Sure, I teach calculus. But I'm no good at arithmetic either. Don't worry about it, kid."

[mangosteen]

Note: I apologize in advance for being a bit pedantic, but this is what has worked for me.

The only advice I can give you is the following:

----------

An extraterrestrial lands on earth.
They want to talk with you.
They speak fluent English, with reasonable knowledge of American idiom.
They ask you, "What is the Internet?"

Answer.

----------


Your answer will likely range all over the place, going off on wild tangents as you consciously connect various disciplines that come together when talking about what is a relatively simple-yet-complex communications system. Don't worry about it. Just give a full answer. Take notes on where you go with it. Only break it down into serialized chunks once you've seen where you've gone.

[marith.livejournal.com]

I think an Internet class would be a great idea, because you understand it at a nuts-and-bolts level and very few people do. The students you teach will be using it for the rest of their lives, and would doubtless appreciate not having to think of it as a black box.

(Mind you, I use the electricity in my apartment without knowing exactly how it works, but it'd be better if I did.)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

I find that I feel freaked out about teaching something if I don't feel like I am a complete expert in it in every way possible. So I'll give to you the advice that was given to me. You are huge technical computer genius (in my case, talented artist). This means that you will already be miles ahead of anyone else in the class. So chill, cause you're more than perfectly competent.

Another concern of course is the act of teaching itself, balancing out the information in such a way that it is understandable and well organized. In such cases I usually think about classes that I felt were the most effective and cohesive from my own experience and then look at why I found them to be so helpful/smart/useful/grokable. :)Building an outline is also helpful and keeps one on target.

Good luck! Not that you'll need it really. :)

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

As a break in the class structure, have them implement the Avian IP Protocol over sneakernet. :-)

[wren13.livejournal.com]

Wow, great description. I steal from my old lectures, too

[wren13.livejournal.com]

You can also look at the class as a good refresher for you - this is how I handle it (and I'm writing a seminar this week, myself!)