Comment by aik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aik | Hacker News Reader

> "The first time you teach a class, it’s incredibly hard and time consuming, but the difficulty drops like a logarithm to a relatively low plateau after you’ve done it a few times. This appears to be reflected in data."

I'm not entirely sure if this is a good reflection of the teaching role, or at least what it should be. Also, this statement to me gives the impression that teaching is a fairly static or fixed process -- once you've done it a little, your subconscious can take over. Sadly one can get by with that mindset (and unfortunately I've had plenty of teachers who act like they believe this), but any good teacher would be saddened by this. Proper teaching is so much more than just knowing the subject, or the routine. The amount of effort and thought involved in skillfully and effectively teaching any idea or concept to a wide range of different people with different backgrounds and knowledge and world views isn't a task that I believe can become automatic. Good teaching involved understanding your students and understanding where they're coming from and what they know, and tailoring everything you do to get each individual student deeply involved in the subject at hand. That's no easy task, even for seasoned teachers!

I'm not suggesting you necessarily are part of this mindset, however sadly so many in the US have such an obscured view of what teaching truly is. In my opinion, that is one of the core problems with education in the US.

> "Note too that people getting teaching degrees at the graduate level get substantially lower GRE scores than those in almost all other disciplines."

Sorry I don't understand -- what's your point with this, what is this supposed to prove, or how does this contribute to the argument?

As another graduate student who teaches, I can confirm jseliger's claim. Teaching difficulty drops of insanely fast. Don't think of it as making the task automatic, but rather having familiar territory off of which to base the things you say.

After one semester teaching a class, you discover what ideas the students tend to find most confusing and what types of errors are the most common.

Having leftover notes from the last time you taught saves you you most of the planning work, too.

Perhaps we need to talk in scales or include some comparators here. I completely agree that difficulty does drop some with more subject knowledge, teaching experience, and familiarity with the subject and types of questions and students, but by how much really? To me it sounds like it's being suggested that teaching becomes "easy"? Effortless? Not necessarily mentally taxing? Not necessarily time consuming? I can't see how one could _effectively_ teach and think this.

Again, I don't see teaching as simply "transferring" facts/knowledge. Students can test well and have no conceptual understanding whatsoever. Or, students can show understanding but have underlying mental models untouched (making them even more confused than previously). Both of these cases are failures.

The book "What the Best College Teachers Do" has amazing insights on how involved, dedicated, knowledgeable, and wise very successful and effective teachers are. The amount of thought and effort they put into their courses is staggering, so I'm approaching this discussion from that frame of mind, rather than what the average teacher (or student teacher) does.

"To me it sounds like it's being suggested that teaching becomes "easy"? Effortless? Not necessarily mentally taxing?"

I doubt teaching will ever be "effortless," at least if you're any good or aspire to be any good, but the idea that you have to spend five hours of prep (or some ridiculous number) for every hour of class; I probably spend ~15 minutes prepping for a 50 – 75 minute class if I've already read the material a couple times, have a loose lesson plan, and, as one of the above posters mentioned, know where the likely trouble spots are going to be.

If you're good or want to be good, I don't think you ever just phone it in. But these stories of hero teachers spending 12 hours a day, every day working to prep for class sound highly improbable to me, based in part on experience and based in part on the aforementioned BLS data.

Teaching can also be hugely mentally taxing while you're in the classroom. That's when I'm most on my toes and most ready to follow where the class goes; if a bunch of people want to discuss a subject, or unexpected questions arise, or whatever, you have to be ready to roll with it. Those are often the most satisfying classes. Most of the time I go in with a loose plan that'll cover whatever I'm shooting to cover that day, and if the class goes in another direction that's still productive, I'm ready to roll.

> "But these stories of hero teachers spending 12 hours a day, every day working to prep for class sound highly improbable to me"

The stories I hear about are the ones of teachers working ~12 hours a day because they teach several different subjects a day and constantly have mounds of documentation the state requires of them on every student. In addition, they have large classes and spend hours and hours grading and providing valuable feedback on homework/projects and exams.

For the sake of the discussion, some sample thoughts about what the "good" teachers think about:

What about considering the larger questions? Why are the students in the course in the first place? Throughout the course, are they being inspired to continue their studies outside of class? Why is the material on the syllabus actually on the syllabus -- what purpose does any of it serve the students? Is this purpose taught in such a way that it is understood by the students? Are they often intrinsically motivated to learn or are most of them just seeking a good grade? How can you structure each activity, lecture, and exam to ensure or encourage students to be intrinsically motivated and care about their learning and development? How can you help students desire the knowledge long-term, rather than just for the course or for their studies...? Are the students learning to think about the subject at a deeper level -- more like the experts? How can you encourage such thinking? Is the learning environment or atmosphere itself safe and welcoming -- encouraging students to ask questions without fear of failure or looking dumb, and is free from stereotypes and negative expectations -- does it encourage free-thinking, discovery, negotiation of meaning -- does the teacher feedback encourage all this? Is the learning functional or is it just leading to correct answers? Do the students to the proper extent have control over their own education/learning? Are the expectations in place to encourage this? Is it thought about what should be expected of the students once they complete the lesson, section or course? What deep mental models does it appear the students have that prevent them from learning to their fullest? How could those be tackled? How can it be encouraged to collaborate on finding answers? How can the course be taught by having the students asking the proper questions rather than being told what to think?... and so on.

Taxing...

Don't forget either that "It gets easier as you get more experienced" happens in all professions. Those people who now find it "easy" are people with skills, and people with skills are worth more money because they do things "easily".

I'd like to see someone approach any other professional and claim she should get less money now that her job comes more easily to her.

I used to teach as a graduate student. It's nothing compared to what actual teachers do. Someone else has set the syllabus and usually has set the lecture notes. There was no teaching work for me to do during my "holidays". And while I didn't mark papers at home, the other grad students who did got paid - something that salaried teachers don't get. Sure, there's a bit of a hump in getting used to standing up the front of a class, but it's only a part of what being a teacher is.

The main article also neatly skips over the risk that teachers do have - excluding tertiary, they have far more job roles than they used to and get sued or abused with monotonous regularity, particularly in regards to their new-found 'nurse' role.

The whole article reeks of "teaching as a profession is just being a glorified graduate student TA" when it's clearly not. It's like a bricklayer saying that there's nothing special to being an architect.

I'd like you to survey some other teachers who teach in high schools and grammar schools of varying class levels.

I'd venture to guess your observation is way off...

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