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comment by lm
lm  ·  2240 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 7, 2018

I think it's just general public speaking anxiety but I haven't thought too much about it since I usually am busy prepping right before and so long as I don't just sit there and think about my feelings I can keep calm.

Sharing knowledge is absolutely a learned skill. If you can, get involved with tutoring as soon as possible, even if it's just informal hanging-out-in-a-department-lounge-and-talking-to-other-students tutoring. You get one-on-one time with students and most of them are comfortable saying that they have no idea what you mean by what you just said. It'll help you develop the ability to explain the same idea a bunch of different ways.

I'm a grad student so I just teach college students, which has a couple of advantages: they're (slightly) more mature than teenagers, and they're in school to some extent because they want to be there. So, I can't speak to dealing with teenagers in particular.

I mostly teach math and programming. I like to motivate material by introducing a question students don't have the tool to answer yet or by drawing analogy to something they already know about (e.g. when talking about rational expressions I'll start by talking about how polynomials kind of-sort of behave like integers, point out that we can make fractions from integers, and then get in to how rational expressions work).

Another thing that's fun to do is to talk about the history around an idea -- who made it, what were they trying to do, why is it the way that it is, etc. People like stories and having a little narrative to go along with an idea helps them remember it better and might even help them see the bigger picture.

Just about anyone can read Wikipedia and get factual knowledge on a topic -- it's your ability to provide context and build relationships with other ideas that is really valuable to students.

Jokes and terrible puns are also great!





FirebrandRoaring  ·  2240 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In a bad place today, so I'll just say:

Thank you for sharing the insight. I'd love to continue some other time, if you're okay with it.

lm  ·  2240 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Absolutely! May tomorrow be better for you.