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Few tips to teach hard things
There are several things that I find rewarding about teaching. I love the faces that people do when they suddenly got something, or when they look at you really focused during a lecture. It’s almost orgasmic when you hear a full classroom laughing out loud at a funny but precise metaphor.
Even tough I don’t have decades of experience in this area, I’ve always been very thoughtful about how to teach something, and I’ve found myself several times giving these tips to other teachers and assistants. So I decided that I could write something about this and share it afterwards.
Enough talking about me. Let’s start!
Train your empathy!
I remember having a talk with Franco Bulgarelli (a teacher and friend of mine) in one of my first attendances to those meetings after I became his assistant, several years ago (sigh.. I’m getting old...). He told me something like: “don’t be scared to give us your input, you’ll never be as useful as you are right now”.
He wasn’t saying that I won’t be as good as when I first started (I think), but that I’ll never be as similar to a student as I was back then.
So.. why was that important?
I think the best way to really make someone understand something, specially if it’s difficult, is to make an explicit effort to set your mindset as identical as the mindset of the interlocutor that your trying to educate.
That consists on replicating a mindset without all the facts, syllogisms and theories that the student doesn’t have (or doesn’t remember very well).
According to Franco, I was useful because I had that mindset just 1 year ago so I didn’t have to remember so much to get there. Now, if you are not in that situation, you could achieve that by simply making some sort of reverse engineering of the concept that you are trying to explain. Then, you could do some questions until you reach known ground with the student.
Once you get there, you have to transit the path again with the student, step by step, in order to make them understand the concept.
Most of the times, the students will say “oh right! I got it” in the middle of that path, because they just didn’t get a certain step.
This shouldn’t be so hard. The hard thing is to make this a habit.
I think this is a key skill when teaching something hard. I saw a lot of really skillful people that totally sucked at teaching (yeah.. that’s the word I was looking for..) because they were so far from their interlocutors that they couldn’t make a connection with them. They are great at their work, but they fail at transmitting it.
Last comment: this isn’t just useful for teaching purposes but it also help us to have a better understanding of something. That’s why techniques like rubber duck debugging exist.
Never stop reading them!
When I was a teenager I was in a really irksome course at high school. We were really, really difficult. But we had a teacher who was completely resigned. She limited herself to give a pale and lifeless lecture to all of us while we were making noise without paying any attention at all. I remember staring at her blank look while she was shyly saying those words to an imaginary wall or something. It was kind of funny, if not sad..
So.. that’s an extreme case and I know public high schools are difficult. But if you cannot connect with your audience part of the fault is yours.
What I’m trying to say is simple. While you are teaching something, you have to pay attention to your interlocutors communication. Not only through their words (or lack of them), but their body language too.
If you see them tired, make a break. If you see them unfocused, improve interactivity (questions, shared work, practical exercises, voting.. you get the idea, get creative).
The things you could do are different depending on your audience (which you must know). It’s not the same if you’re teaching something to 2 or 3 coworkers than if you are at the front of a classroom, if the students are advanced or newbies, etc.
My focus here is not on what to do at different scenarios, but on to be aware of them, which is the previous step. We are blind otherwise and we won’t be able to adapt to our audiences, which is a key aspect to make an efficient knowledge transmission.
Use the joke Luke!
Have you seen those racing games when you have to drive as fast as you can and there’s a countdown in the screen showing the time you have left to reach the next checkpoint? Well.. I like thinking jokes and funny moments like checkpoints that add a certain amount of attention time to your students countdown.
Laugh simply awakes you.
I’m not saying that you should stop what you are saying and start a joke. I’m saying that many times, in order to explain something, we use analogies, examples, stories, etc. Those things could be not just precise and helpful, but funny too.
Obviously, you have to take control of this. When I first started, I used to lose control of my class on those moments and then it was hard to wrap all heads around the thing we were talking about.
You also have to take context into account. If the ambient is pretty formal, if the audience is known for not liking that or if you are at a stressful situation at your work, it could get uncomfortable.
However, I think nowadays those situations are becoming rare and a couple of well timed jokes are frequently welcomed. My point here is that they could help you to make your knowledge transfer more efficient and your interlocutor’s attention capacities last longer.
Try sometimes thinking life like a circle, not like a line
Think about this: suppose that you have to live your life eternally, once and again, always in the exact same way (please stop for minute and let that thought pass through you). How would this idea transform you now? Would you still do the things that you plan doing today? Would you keep reading this?
This is a famous Nietzsche idea known as the eternal return, which makes us think our lives not like lines, but like circles.
When I wrote the words “Would you keep reading this?” a couple of seconds ago, I was thinking “please answer yes!”. And that’s what I think about my lectures: I want my interlocutors to say “yes” if someone asks them that.
When I was at the university, I had to take a subject called “Programming Paradigms”. Several people told me to assist to Fernando Dodino’s classes, but they were on Saturday’s mornings.. and.. come on..
I ended up accepting that recommendation and signed up for that.
Dodino was the best teacher that I had in the University. Not only because he and his assistants taught us mind-blowing things and offered tons of ad-hoc online material, but because it was the first time that I saw that classes could be fun, enjoyable and inspiring. Even the written material was fun and easy to read.
Some classes were even thought like shows. They introduced concepts by trying to sell’em to you in very unconventional ways. Sometimes that style could lose the original focus, but in general it gracefully forced you to pay attention.
One day I realized that I always had a reason to get out of bed those days when bad sleeping forces seemed invincible. And that might not even happen if I had the Saturdays free.
So.. at the end of the day.. isn’t that what is all about? To want to live the next day?
Is there another thing that we could aspire harder than to generate that feeling to our students, coworkers and friends?
I just hope that this ends up inspiring somebody to generate that feeling to someone, someday, somewhere.
Stay tuned for more practical stuff!