Everything you know is wrong

What if someone told you that everything you knew was wrong? That they had the capability to test and assess you in all areas your knowledge base and it was found to be incomplete, underdeveloped, and in some instances, inaccurate. They don’t tell you this in a rude or condescending way. Heck, maybe they just sent it to you in a letter.

What would your reaction be? Most people’s reactions would be to wander off for a bit, initially to wallow in self-pity, sadness, disappointment and low self esteem. One might write a letter to Mrs. Beebout, her second grade teacher asking for some sort of explanation.

After that, the path kind of splits. Some will continue to wander. That shelf of low self-esteem can become a ceiling of low expectations. But others will jump back into the fray, gathering more information, demanding better of themselves and those around them, learning. Growing.

What if someone told you that everything you knew was right? That they had the capabilities to test and assess you all areas your knowledge base were found to be complete, deep in development and complexities, accurate and active? They don’t tell you this in a congratulatory way. Heck, maybe they just send it to you in a letter?

What would your reaction be? Well after a little bit of well deserved back-patting what does one do? This is a problem in a couple of ways.

Stick with me for a sec.

Professors are, most of the time, content experts and facilitators. They are really two different things. There is a trend beginning to separate the two roles into two people; content experts who don’t do a lot of the facilitating in a class and facilitators that don’t have a large base of content knowledge, but for the most part, professors are still doing both jobs.

At the community college level, professors rarely have the opportunity to delve into the depths of their content area with student and even with their colleagues. This is pretty normal. We teach a lot of first and second year courses, and often, areas of focus are handled by one or two faculty members.

(Example: I posted on Facebook in a thread about being a theatre geek, that you knew you were one if someone told you they were doing a production of Cherry Orchard and you asked them “Which translation?” I had a student message me later that day and ask, “What’s Cherry Orchard.”)

We have got content covered. Facilitation is another problem entirely.

Professors aren’t like other teachers. We don’t take classes on how to be professors.  If you are lucky, you are awarded a teaching assistantship as a graduate student to help get your feet wet. But there are no “how to give a good lecture” classes or “how to write a good test” classes, or “how to grade 75, 12-15 page papers without jumping off a bridge half way through” classes. I took college level theatre courses for 10 years before I got my first full time teaching job. I taught classes for maybe the last five of those and I had zero classes on how to be an effective teacher.

Interestingly enough, most of my fellow graduate students and I agreed that we would have welcomed and appreciated those types of classes even if it would have added to our course load. But they really just don’t exist.

Fortunately, professors are generally professional learners. We are good at observation and synthesis of information. We lean on one another to be better, sharing tips and tricks and advice. It’s not a bad system, but it has its problems.

There are a lot of professors that lump their content expertise and their facilitation expertise into one general pool. That’s a problem. Teaching is hard. It is as much a philosophy of self as it is a vocation. It changes all the time. But I have met professors fresh out of school all the way up to nearly retired who feel like they’ve been there and done that when it comes to teaching.

When it comes to effective teaching, really being a good teacher, it’s vital that you live every day like you got the first letter. Because when you believe that your knowledge of something is complete, you leave no room for what’s new. When you believe what you do is 100% accurate you never question your choices, your methods, or your outcomes. A student fails and the professor believes that it is the fault of the student. And it may be. But if we question ourselves and our methods, we can look at that student’s failure and say “why” and “was there something else I could have done?”

Often the answer is, “no.” But often isn’t always. No one is perfect. Our students are changing and evolving, individually and as a community. What was true five years ago may not be true now. What was true yesterday might not be true today. But you will never know if you don’t take a risk. Take a risk and say that today, maybe I’m not right. Maybe everything I know is wrong.