Advice On Teaching A Subject You Know Nothing About
posted on 09/04/2009
Maybe you're a new employee at a school and the administration says, "Aha! Untapped resource! We have that class in [insert unknown subject here] that we need someone to teach, but the only truly qualified people we have to teach it are already stressed beyond reason. Let's get [insert your name here] to do it!" Or maybe you've decided to see the world (or at least another part of it) by signing up to teach, say, English, in a foreign country. Maybe when you arrived, they told you you would be teaching a class on Advanced Grammar or The Philosophy of Education (true story), and the last time you thought about that subject, you were 16 years old and it gave you a headache. Whatever the case, I have a solution for you!
Step One: Attitude
The first thing you need to do is decide that you're going to get through this, no matter what it takes. You've got to be ready and willing to get going, since the going has already gotten tough. You've got to get your head in the game, like that one song from High School Musical. If you don't, your megalomaniacal plans for world domination will never come to fruition…Oops! Wrong advice column. What I meant to say is that if you don't, you might as well get a frontal lobotomy, because your teaching wouldn't turn out any worse. Attitude is truly everything. So get your game face on.
Step Two: Research
Let's assume you really do know nothing about the subject. Like me with Ordinary Differential Equations. What is the first thing I'm going to do after getting my attitude corrected? I'm going to go about learning everything I possibly can about ODE as fast as I possibly can. I definitely won't know everything for my class tomorrow, but I can get a basic overview from one of those cool online resources like Wikipedia, which will get me through at least the first class period, which is the most immediate threat. After all, the first period is meant to be a syllabus-giving, introduction-spiel-sharing period anyway, which brings us to our next point.
Step Three: Planning
You need to get started with the planning of your class. It would be good to at least get a list of themes and set out when you're going to be teaching each one. This will help you know when you should be reading up on each one (preferably at least a week in advance, but the sooner the better). I would set out the whole semester before you teach your first class, if possible. Plus, all this planning can help you zip off your syllabus like nothing. If you have a textbook, that will help you a LOT. You should invest lots of time in making sure that you won't look foolish for your next class period…I mean, making sure that you know what you'll be talking about.
Step Four: Have fun
Yes, that's what I said. It seems strange, but if you have fun with the subject or even just with the students, they will rate the class highly, even if only in their minds. More importantly, they'll rate YOU highly and you'll have dodged the bullet. Obviously, this fun must be accompanied by plenty of actual information, but that's a given, isn't it? This doesn't mean that I have to like ODE, but it does mean I should try to be creative, maybe crack some jokes (math jokes are actually more common than you might think), and do unexpected things, like breaking into a recitation of The Raven or jumping of my desk (your mileage may vary, try not to offend anyone). Keep in mind that, while you are trying to transfer actual information to the students, which the book will help you with a lot, these fun and wacky things can also serve as cleverly-disguised fillers when, for example, your lectures have about caught up to your research temporarily (but try to keep that on the DL *hint hint*).
Conclusion
There are many other tidbits that might help. Be honest with your students when you don't know, but tell them you'll get back to them (and do!). Use your resources, which could include books, coworkers that know the subject, internet sources, and psychic hotlines (just kidding). Keep your chin up so you don't drown. Find (hopefully non-time-consuming) outlets when you get too stressed. But ultimately, it all comes down to good old-fashioned hard work. Don't wimp out. You can do it!
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Previous Comments
tcollins says:
(61d 9h 7min ago)
You know, there are somethings you can get away with not knowing anything about them. Differential equations are not one of them.
cromwellt says:
(59d 6h 48min ago)
The previous comment either means: a) life requires that you know something about differential equations (which I would assume to be humorous and would cause me to laugh, which was my initial reaction) or b) you can't teach a class in ODE without knowing something about it first (which I realized was the probable meaning on further reflection). If it is b), I would say that it would obviously help to know something about the subject first, but that is not what this column is about, and I would also say that I disagree. I chose that example specifically because it is something that most people know nothing about. I never got past Precalculus in college (my degree is in the humanities), but if someone asked me to teach ODE, I would do exactly what I said here, even if that meant asking a colleague for a crash course in Calc and staying up until 2AM or whatever, and, while I might end up being a total failure, I would have done my best and both the students and I would have learned lots about the subject from this experience. Maybe something like that is not recommended, but this column is not about whether or not to do it, it is about how to do it.
tcollins says:
(59d 4h 55min ago)
It's not a bad article, just a bad example. In the case of ODEs, since you have only a precalculus education, the students almost assuredly have more knowledge on the subject then you would.
If you were teaching a lesson on say, the Bolshevik Revolution, you could find a set of facts to give the students about what happend, if not the why of it. With a subject in advanced mathematics or science, that won't cut it.
Most likely all you would end up doing is confusing the students because they would take you as an authority which you are not.
This reminds me of my eight grade math teacher. When she taught us the order of operations, she gave us a mnemonic My Dear Aunt Sally. Multiplication Division, Addition, Subtraction. Since her math skills were not the best she taught that it was a strict rule. That multiplication ALWAYS comes before division and so on. When I got to high school I was forced to unlearn that nonsense.
That was an eigth grade math class. Not a college level math class.
My point in my original comment was that you SHOULD NOT teach certain classes if you have no knowledge of them. In some cases the best way to teach these complex subjects would be to do nothing at all. You end up doing more damgage then good.
justmesuzanne says:
(53d 19h 10min ago)
I agree with you on this, cromwelt. As long as you, "Be honest with your students when you don't know, but tell them you'll get back to them (and do!)" you are fine to teach any subject. It is one thing to know nothing and go into teaching with a know-it-all attitude. It is another to be recruited to do something and to simply try your best to do it in all honesty. Students respect a teacher who is able and willing to admit to a lack of omniscience and instead adopts an attitude of learning and discovering together.
Often in education today, and certainly in the business world, people are expected to teach things they know nothing about all the time! There has to be a method for approaching this madness. It's certainly not as if you can just say, "Well, I'm not going to do it!" Not if you want to keep your job, anyway!
mikhail says:
(45d 10h 6min ago)
Yeah, I'd call this advice on how to FAKE teaching a subject you know nothing about. You'd probably get away with it for a few minutes, but if it's anything advanced, like differential equations, your students will catch on pretty fast. At that point, if you keep going, you'll just embarrass yourself.
If you're teaching a standalone subject that requires no previous knowledge (surfing, for example), you can all learn together, and you can be open about your lack of knowledge--you can try to be a quicker learner than your students and pull them along. However, if you know nothing about and try to teach a subject that comes at the end of a long chain of knowledge, such as advanced math, it is pretty much a given that your students will know more than you right away and you'll make an ass of yourself. You're better off trying to find the student with the most knowledge and asking him/her to teach the class, or just asking your students to read the book.