Comments | david_anderson: Experts as teachers

david_anderson

Experts as teachers

Nov 05, 2009 21:37

Towards the beginning of last school year, I went to a lecture being given by a potential new hire as a geology professor, as did one of my professors. We were supposed to rate how they did, to help the hiring committee to make their choice ( Read more... )

Comments 2

mshrmit November 6 2009, 07:02:34 UTC

The ability to reach students is the most important thing. If you can teach, you can gain the expertise as you need it. Hell, I taught French for a semester, not knowing anything when I started.

david_anderson November 6 2009, 08:08:39 UTC

I had a chemistry teacher in high school who won several state and national teacher of the year awards. He started his career as a PE teacher, and became the chemistry teacher when the "real" chemistry teacher died one year. It was only supposed to be temporary, but he was a good teacher and kept at it for another 30 years.

He told us on the first day of class that he knew enough chemistry to teach it at the high school level, but we would know more than him by the time we finished one year of college chemistry. He was right, on both counts.

If he knew more chemistry, he might have been better able to answer a few more questions, but he knew more than enough to teach us what we needed to know. He really deserve those awards, and it wasn't due to his expertise in the subject.