aurelia, for me it's more about when the teacher has information you don't have, and which could be useful. In Emily's case, it sounded like, "What do you, as a more experienced teacher, think I could have done better?" In mine, we were working on an interview protocol, and kept asking the prof if he thought what were doing would work in the field, and he literally wouldn't tell us. And it turned out the answer was no, it wouldn't really work. I feel like it would have been OK, pedagogically, for us to have known that ahead of time, since I'm sure it was glaringly obvious to the prof.

Oh, and Consuela, can't you refuse to be pushed up the ladder? You'd think people would be happy to keep people in jobs they are good at. Stupid Peter Principle.

Most of the time the students really can come up with an appropriate answer, they just don't realize that they can.

What Jesse said. Also, honestly, although I know it's considered good pedagogy and I actually do it myself, I hate hate hate it. Possibly because I will remember it if you just tell me, whereas if you ask me what I mostly learn is the stress of trying to figure out what you want me to say. I know that that makes me the exception and not the rule, and I am actually aiming to teach all of my students and not those just like me, so I totally try to persuade them to come up with answers.

Also, when I ask my kids to try to come up with the answers, the worst that can happen is it turns out they don't really understand, in which case we keep working on it. The worst that can happen with me is that he finds out I have no idea what I'm doing and should never be allowed to be a teacher oh my god what are you even doing here? Or, well, so say the voices inside my head.

he literally wouldn't tell us

I don't do that. And I've never officially taught grad students. And my field is half practical math/science/engineering and half art, so some questions will have right/wrong answers and some will be completely subjective.

IOW, I am totally backing out of this conversation.

oops, didn't mean to stop the conversation. I just figured my oranges (or more like crabapples) didn't belong with your apples.

No stoppage! I was, um, pretending to work.

Does anyone know if Top Model reruns? Because I am filled with angst about the new time slot of Amazing Race. Yeah, that's right -- instead of writing my thesis, I've been pondering my tv taping schedule for the week.

I was just sort of out of things to say. I'm really not opposed to the Socratic method per se (or, as fanfiction would have it, per say), just, er, as it applies to me. And teaching.

What do you think, folks, could I say that to him? "I'm still struggling with this whole thing, and you're the one who could see the whole class and how I'm doing. How would you change it?"

Apparently grades have gone up slightly this quarter, largely because I took last week to let them all make up missing work. It was actually a time-filler, because for various reasons I didn't want to cover anything new, but also it's sort of painful to watch them get zeros to drag down their grade just because they weren't in class that day. Although of course they need to take responsibility for it themselves. Well, there you go. The eternal tradeoff.

What do you think, folks, could I say that to him? "I'm still struggling with this whole thing, and you're the one who could see the whole class and how I'm doing. How would you change it?"

It depends on the guy, obviously, but I think you could. Give your own answers first, and then ask if there's anything he could see that you didn't.

Give your own answers first, and then ask if there's anything he could see that you didn't.

Part of my problem is actually that I freeze up when he asks me that, so I don't always have answers. Especially since it's literally as the last students are leaving the room.

Oh, that sucks. Can you tell him you need time to reflect on what just happened?