This is just my $0.02, but I am worried about comparing my (our) college experience to the typical student’s. For whatever reason, we here decided to make a life staying in the college environment. That suggests that the experience was positive enough that we didn’t want to ever leave. I wanted to do the reading and do well and learn. I am not…[Read more]

That sounds good. I wish there was some straightforward way of grading based on how well students are learning to learn, rather than just on how much they learned.

I constantly stress the strange nature of the material we are coI constantly stress the strange nature of the material we are covering so that the students don’t think it is them when something sounds counterintuitive, uninteresting, or just a way of thinking that is foreign to their experience.

That sounds very true. Modeling a good response to ignorance let’s our students see a good way to react to not knowing as opposed to, say, making something up or being ashamed that they don’t know. Students need to see questions as a way to learn and grow, not the price they pay for getting information that they will need for an exam.

I am lucky to be fairly ignorant. I frequently find myself saying in class something like: “I have no idea, let’s look it up” or I never thought about that, let’s think it through and see where we end up.” This I hope models the idea that there is no shame in not knowing something or in not having a ready opinion about a topic. It also lets me…[Read more]

I prefer your version of this to the original. Failures may or may not be a greater teacher than success, but when students are presented with a way to reframe what they are doing, rather than reframe what they know to have happened – that is they can think of a problem as an opportunity rather than a failure as a success – they can approach…[Read more]

“Failure is a greater teacher than success.”

I don’t know… Everyone seems to think that it is true. It is the kind of thing we want to be true, because we fail so often and we want our failures to be positive. This sounds like a good way to start an inspirational pep-talk. But is it true?

When one fails, they may or may not learn something fro…[Read more]