Tales from the Classroom XIV: The Secret to Good Teaching

Posted on February 26, 2004 @ 8:40 am

After spending the past few years teaching college classes, I believe that I have finally arrived at the Secret to Good Teaching. As far as I can tell, good teaching consists of either:

1. knowing a lot about the subject matter, or
2. successfully creating the illusion that one knows a lot about the subject matter.

Obviously, the first option requires years of studying and research to achieve. That’s an advantage that I simply do not have with respect to American politics, the course that I’m currently teaching. Therefore, the onus shifts to the second option: how does one successfully create the illusion that he or she knows a great deal about a particular academic subject?

It turns out that the answer is really quite simple: anecdotes.

That’s right — the key to making students believe that you know what you’re talking about (assuming you don’t) is to pepper your lectures and discussions with anecdotes about the material and other witty asides. For instance, if you’re teaching a chemistry course, the students will be wowed if you bring up the fact that Marie Curie eventually died of radiation poisoning. Or, if you’re teaching a history course, you can bowl them over with the fact that Teddy Roosevelt once wrestled a grizzly bear in the White House Rose Garden for control of the Panama Canal. I think. The details aren’t really that important.

What is important, however, is that the teacher exhibits that he or she can go beyond what’s in the textbook, showing a fundamental familiarity and comfort with the material. Just think back on your own education. Aren’t the teachers who knew all the interesting stories trivia the ones who you remember most fondly?

Of course, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Doesn’t the liberal use of anecdotes, by its very nature, require substantive knowledge of the material?”

That’s certainly one approach, but I have discovered a second way, dear readers, and that is the true Secret to Good Teaching (when actual knowledge of the subject matter isn’t an option, of course).

Most textbooks include their own anecdotes that are relevant to the subject matter (it seems that textbook authors have also stumbled onto the Secret of Good Textbook Writing). Unfortunately, the students — in theory — are also reading the textbook for any given course, so they will most likely be able to detect if their teacher is simply repeating the same trivia that was already presented in their weekly reading assignments.

Even if the students are reading their textbook, however, it’s a virtual lock that they aren’t reading multiple textbooks on the subject. And that, dear readers, is the Secret to Good Teaching: consulting multiple textbooks to aggregate a wide range of anecdotes in order to create the illusion that one knows a lot about the subject matter.

For instance, I consult no fewer than nine American politics texts in preparation for each of my lectures to gather every anecdote possible to supplement the “nuts and bolts” of the lecture itself. Don’t believe me? Here’s the full spread:

By the time I’ve read six or seven chapters on the topic of, say, interest groups, I’m armed with enough anecdotes to last me through a week of lecturing — anecdotes that the students haven’t already read in their own textbook. Sure, it’s a time consuming process, but nobody ever said that teaching was easy. Best of all, every textbook that a teacher reads brings him or her closer to the ideal situation of actually knowing something of substance about the subject matter. It’s a win-win situation!

So, now that you know the true Secret to Good Teaching — using multiple textbooks to cull anecdotes and other trivia, thus creating the illusion of knowledge — go forth and educate, dear readers!

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