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" I just made sure to always be 2 weeks ahead of what the students were learning" I feel teachers who use that technique can't provide much depth in their teac

" I just made sure to always be 2 weeks ahead of what the students were learning" I feel teachers who use that technique can't provide much depth in their teaching. The best teachers I had were way ahead of what they were teaching and knew the topic in and out.

ntropic_thundr 4y ago
I completely agree for full time professors/teachers. But given the scenario is being the TA (ie a PhD student tasked with supporting a professor's class, often 1 of many TAs) then I don't think we can expect him to be way ahead of every topic in the class.
ChadNauseam 4y ago
I totally agree, but maybe it’s best to have some of both. A professor who knows the subject inside and out and a TA who’s two weeks ahead. When I was first learning to code, it took some effort for me to understand what a function did, particularly the concept of returning an expression, or what happens if you write `foo() + bar()`. (In what order are `foo` and `bar` called?) Now of course those concepts are trivial. But it’s easy to forget their initial difficulty when teaching, so I might be liable to just breeze through functions and leave most students behind. A freshly-learned TA would remember what was hard and be able to tell students the intuition-pumps that helped them, while directing more advanced questions to the professor. For example, a TA might know to explicitly say that every time you call a function, it remembers where it was called so it can `return` there at the end of the function’s execution. Then if a student wants more detail about that, they can ask the professor who can explain how a function call is invisibly being converted to code that allocates a new stack frame and sets the execution pointer.
- hyperpallium2 4y ago
  Further to your point, a lecturer who has long understood something can find it hard to understand how someone could misunderstand it - the kinds of misunderstandings they night have. aside/ school teachers are different, they learn typical misunderstandings with experience.
- nathanasmith 4y ago
  This falls in line with how I've always thought it might be better to learn a foreign language from an instructor who mastered it as a second language rather than a native speaker. Assuming two instructors of otherwise equal theoretical ability and experience, the former might have a more empathetic understanding of the learning process a second language student would go through whereas the latter might unintentionally, innocently gloss over things that, to them, seem intuitive but the student may encounter as huge stumbling blocks. The ordering of direct and and indirect object English versus Spanish pronouns spring to mind.
SteveDR 4y ago
My favorite teacher in high school taught AP Calculus and learned the material one month ahead of teaching my class. I loved it. She was the best “explainer” of any teacher I’ve had. She knew which homework problems were going to be relatively hard, and which were crucial to understanding the core lessons of each chapter. She also emphasized intuitive understanding a lot, which I enjoyed. Very Feynman-ey. I think this approach shines when your goal is to help struggling students. I’d imagine this approach would be pretty bad at helping gifted students achieve their maximum potential.
- SteveDR 4y ago
  *1 month, not one week, sorry. My edits aren’t going through atm.

ntropic_thundr 4y ago

I completely agree for full time professors/teachers. But given the scenario is being the TA (ie a PhD student tasked with supporting a professor's class, often 1 of many TAs) then I don't think we can expect him to be way ahead of every topic in the class.

ChadNauseam 4y ago

I totally agree, but maybe it’s best to have some of both. A professor who knows the subject inside and out and a TA who’s two weeks ahead. When I was first learning to code, it took some effort for me to understand what a function did, particularly the concept of returning an expression, or what happens if you write `foo() + bar()`. (In what order are `foo` and `bar` called?) Now of course those concepts are trivial. But it’s easy to forget their initial difficulty when teaching, so I might be liable to just breeze through functions and leave most students behind. A freshly-learned TA would remember what was hard and be able to tell students the intuition-pumps that helped them, while directing more advanced questions to the professor. For example, a TA might know to explicitly say that every time you call a function, it remembers where it was called so it can `return` there at the end of the function’s execution. Then if a student wants more detail about that, they can ask the professor who can explain how a function call is invisibly being converted to code that allocates a new stack frame and sets the execution pointer.

hyperpallium2 4y ago
Further to your point, a lecturer who has long understood something can find it hard to understand how someone could misunderstand it - the kinds of misunderstandings they night have. aside/ school teachers are different, they learn typical misunderstandings with experience.
nathanasmith 4y ago
This falls in line with how I've always thought it might be better to learn a foreign language from an instructor who mastered it as a second language rather than a native speaker. Assuming two instructors of otherwise equal theoretical ability and experience, the former might have a more empathetic understanding of the learning process a second language student would go through whereas the latter might unintentionally, innocently gloss over things that, to them, seem intuitive but the student may encounter as huge stumbling blocks. The ordering of direct and and indirect object English versus Spanish pronouns spring to mind.

SteveDR 4y ago

My favorite teacher in high school taught AP Calculus and learned the material one month ahead of teaching my class. I loved it. She was the best “explainer” of any teacher I’ve had. She knew which homework problems were going to be relatively hard, and which were crucial to understanding the core lessons of each chapter. She also emphasized intuitive understanding a lot, which I enjoyed. Very Feynman-ey. I think this approach shines when your goal is to help struggling students. I’d imagine this approach would be pretty bad at helping gifted students achieve their maximum potential.

SteveDR 4y ago
*1 month, not one week, sorry. My edits aren’t going through atm.