💡 How To Be A Good Empathizer
It really baffles me how I see all these people in higher level education with top research publications, out-of-the-world CVs, and decades of teaching experience, and then I meet them in person and realize they have the worst presentation/lecturing skills.
Now, I’m not claiming that I’m better than them by any means. After all, I’m just a 21-year-old undergraduate senior who kicked off her CS career only three years ago (not to mention that my e-girl anime aesthetic further undermines my credibility for those who don’t really know me).
But I do have years of experience as a teaching assistant and researcher under one of the most accomplished supervisors in the computer science field (she’s a woman, in case you were imagining some middle-aged dude with glasses and a grey beard), and I’ve had my fair share of setbacks, learning experiences, and key takeaways under her incredible mentorship. I strongly think that if you’re going to devote the rest of your life to academia, you should at least hear a student’s perspective to get a sense of why people have no idea what is going on when the professor speaks, why they drop a course or major, and why nobody seems to ask questions during class.
I haven’t experienced this myself, but my hypothesis is that in undergoing the years-long journey of getting a PhD, the line between what is “common knowledge” and what is not becomes blurred. And that is why there is such a wide gap between the student and the professor, because professors don’t know what the students don’t know and the students themselves don’t know what they don’t know. And then the students can’t even bring themselves to go to office hours to ask questions because there’s this fear of exposing the void within their brain. They fear the potential interrogation about a concept they don’t understand during their one-on-one conversation with the professor, and nobody wants to drive themselves down that rabbit hole. The result? An empty office and a washed up shore of unresolved questions.
So here are some strategies I’ve gathered in my years of observing, teaching, and struggling as a Columbia student.
Don't clutter your slides with text.
Nobody wants to look at an essay while you talk. No one has time to do so in the span of your presentation, and our brains can't process what you're saying while reading a Charles Dickens excerpt at the same time. Even worse, there are people who tend to jot everything down from the slides (I was one of them). You don't want students wondering where to look and scribbling down nonsense in panic mode when they could be paying attention to you. And chances are, if you're copy pasting sentences that you could read from the textbook, you're doing something wrong.If there's a simpler way to teach it, do so.
God, the number of times I wanted to just go up to the projector in Gen Chem I and teach the electron configuration tricks I'd learned in high school in a third of the time the professor did. I don't know how anyone made it through that class without having some exposure to high school chemistry. Look, I got an A+ in that class, but there's a reason I didn't stick with pre-med.
Don't just read off of your slides.
Anyone can do that in their own time. At that point, you're just handing out unlimited tickets to "Let's Not Attend Lecture And Just Download The Lecture PDF" day.Don't talk so fast. 🗣
This one's tough because you want to spend less time on the relatively straightforward concepts and more time on the actual material. You kind of need feedback to determine the pacing that works for you. My recommendation is to run through a couple of practice presentations in front of a smaller audience. It could be some peers, friends, or even your own family.Try not to use the word "obvious."
It sucks when you're trying your best to understand what's going on and then all of a sudden you hear the professor say "Obviously..." Unless you've brought the idea up before or there are prerequisites that students had to take, don't assume that everyone in your class has the same background—some things really aren't as obvious as they seem.Understand that your students are stressed. 🧠
The mental wellbeing of your students is something you should always keep in mind throughout your course. That spark you saw in students' eyes at the start of the semester is going to dwindle here and there. Of course, they have other stressors in their lives that you're not responsible for, but it is part of your job to keep that light going. Being patient and checking in from time to time means a lot more than you think.It's okay to be human. 👍
Yes, professors are human too, and yes, students tend to forget that. Of course, you need to maintain a level of professionalism as appropriate, but there's nothing wrong with dropping a couple jokes about your life that are relevant to the material here and there. In fact, I've found that analogies are one effective mechanism to convey ideas to students. "Nondeterministic finite automata are like shooting your shot. You try all the possibilities until one of them finally accepts." (Okay, maybe not that example. But you get what I mean.) . . .
These are just my personal thoughts. You’re welcome to use this advice, or don’t. You’re also welcome to agree or disagree with my ideas. I’ll probably look at this in ten years and reword some points, but the core ideas conveyed in this post aren’t leaving anytime soon.
🎵 Songs I listened to while writing this:
BIBI - Life is a Bi…
JVNA - Where You Are
Barely Alive, Virtual Riot - Basement Dwellers VIP
👩🏫teaching is hard af👩🎤i just wanna dj📖scholar😨pls don't fire me👩🎓boutta graduate w/ some hot takes