Another day, another day
20-Mar-02
Probably the only truly great thing today is that I helped one of my students gain confidence in her abilities as a future tech writer. She’s someone with good communication skills, teaching experience, and no fear of public speaking. I convinced her today to look into technical training, even though her technical knowledge is not expert.
Why? Because in a classroom, a good trainer is more valuable than a PhD engineer who can’t make eye contact or put together a coherent sentence. A good instructor can make sense of something that the student doesn’t know. Think about it: how many professors or teachers have you had who knew their subject really well, but who couldn’t help you understand it? Did you learn the subject? Chances are, probably not. Now think about the teacher who, even once, said “I don’t know the answer to that, but I will have it for you next week,” and then followed up the following week with the right answer, and helped you understand that answer completely.
Which one is the better teacher? Which one would you hire as a trainer? Personally, I hope you would hire the one who actually got you to understand the subject, as opposed to the one who knew it really well. Often, the expert loses the “newbie” perspective and can’t remember how hard it is to learn the material. Also, it’s kind of like the old joke:
Two hunters were out in the woods, when they interrupted a bear with her cubs. As the two hunters turn to run, the one hunter yells to the other hunter: “We’ll never outrun her!” The other hunter sprints off, calling back: “I don’t have to outrun her– I just have to outrun you!”
Teaching is like that– you don’t have to be an expert. You just have to be more expert than your students. My grandmother was as good at geometry as I am– which is to say, she can draw a circle, but don’t ask her to tell you its surface area (we’re both grammar queens, though). Well, Grandma got stuck teaching geometry one year. She was basically one week ahead of her students, in terms of reading and understanding the textbook. Grandma was a good teacher, so she knew she had to know the material. But she also knew that you can teach someone a subject even if you yourself do not understand it perfectly. Her students, after all, didn’t know the difference. And since she was a good, if strict teacher, they learned the material all the same.