I am enjoying my students and teaching this semester. I have concerns about the level of the knowledge the students are expected to know (and an older faculty member who has been working on things other than teaching is getting concerned, too). I tend towards the idea that if you expect more of people, you will get more from people. The students who expect the course to be difficult are putting the most work in, and it pays off! Other students have ended up dropping the course.
In just a couple of months, I think I have a pretty good relationship with my students in general. I love that they will stop by and ask questions. One of them is serious about trying different things to get her grade up, including coming to my office to take a practice test.
Other students want you to answer every little question they have instead of looking it up, and it drives me crazy. One student in particular has quite a loud voice, and asks questions all the time. This student is smart, but has not quite figured out how to pass an exam in the course. This student asks the most straight forward questions, which is great except they are questions that are super easy to look up. We will see how he does on the next exam...
Regardless, I care about all of them. My first college class. :-)
The biggest intellectual challenge for me so far, though, is committing to an answer when I am not ENTIRELY, but only pretty, sure of the answer. I am used to confirming answers, looking up research, being sure of the answer. My students want that yes or no answer right away. But if I cannot be absolutely sure, I give a vague answer and go look it up later. I need to practice the art of giving an absolute answer, even if I am not absolutely sure.
2 comments:
I've always felt the most valuable skill you can learn is not knowing everything, but simply knowing how to look up the answers. You can't memorize everything in the world, but if you have good research skills you can find the answers to whatever you need to know.
I agree that being able to answer one's own questions is an important life skill. These days, with the internet, there is literally NO EXCUSE for not looking things up. It's not like kids have to go to the library and do research in a 20-year-old encyclopedia, like I used to do back in ye olden days.
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