Rick DeNatale said the following on 3/26/04 4:46 PM:
On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 15:13 -0500, Frye, Matthew wrote:
Oh, and Phil, one nitpick. Just because someone has a Masters
in a subject doesn't make them a good teacher. They can know
the material up and down and still not be a good teacher. I'm
not suggesting this guy is a bad teacher, but I think it's independent
of what degree he has.
True. So very, very true.
I don't know how it is at the community colleges, but my experience at
University (way back in the last century about three decades ago) was
that sometimes a course was taught by a masters or PhD student whose
lower degree was in a different discipline and was trying to learn the
subject just in time. Sometimes even Professors worked this way when
teaching a new course.
Still, I will maintain that is still independent of them being a good
teacher or not. I have been in this position before. As a graduate
student at UNC I taught Comp 144, Programming Language Concepts, a
subject which isn't my specialty. I had to bust my ass to keep ahead
of the class in the material and as a result I learned a lot of things
I had never learned before. Did I always get it right, no. I made
some definitely screwups, but overall I think I did a fairly good
job. (If you want a different opinion, though, ask Dan Chen as he was
one of my students. Sorry, Dan.. O:-)
My point is that even if a teacher doesn't know the subject matter
before the class, he or she should be able to learn it well enough
to be able to teach it to others.
Note that this can apply to giving TriLUG presentations too. O:-)
Perhaps we should put together a list of presentations that people
would like to see and then find people who think that would be
interesting to learn about and let them experiment with it for a
few months and then let us know if they'd like to give a presentation
or a class on that... O:-)
Cheers,
Tanner
--
Tanner Lovelace | Don't move! Or I'll fill ya full of... little
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | yellow bolts of light! - Commander John Crichton
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