Big schools

[amanda_joy422]

So I really like UCI for alot of things (research related) however the teaching situations here annoy me lots and I'm fairly certain it's not a "here" thing but a big school thing. My problem with it is in regards to teaching so many people don't care about it at all. I realize that for a large majority we are not in school to teach. We are in

Comments

[me_weird]

When I asked Ara if I could teach next quarter, he told me that I shouldn't want to teach, and should regard my teaching requirement as something to avoid when possible. Grrr.
Yeah this is definitely a failing of big schools, and also of the skewed idea of who makes the best teacher. The smartest people in the subject often make terrible teachers. They never struggled with the material, so they don't understand why the students are having issues, and usually our "smartest people" are also our star researchers, and feel they have better things to do than teach well. There's a stupid pervasive idea in big schools that on the one hand the smartest people make the best teachers, but on the other hand the smartest people have better things to do than teach well, so we end up with these terrible worthless classes.
*laughs* A big part of why I want to teach is so that I can be the good prof that makes up for a bad one.
Anyway yes, I don't think I added anything there except agreement...the big school attitude towards teaching sucks.

[amanda_joy422]

Yeah I think the problem with people like Ara is they think they are only going to make a difference through research but if you convince someone to like a subject and they go on to discover something great than really you are partly responsible for that something great being discovered.