- #36
berkeman
Mentor
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Interesting thread. For my two cents, I think that some of the best teachers are those who have to make their living using the subject matter, not as teachers, but as practicing scientists or engineers or technicians or whatever.
When you use something every day in your highly technical work, you really have to have developed an intuitive understanding of the how and the why and the underpinnings and motivations and visualizations for the subject. I'm not a teacher per se, but I certainly end up tutoring (students from grammar school through college) or mentoring other EEs in their work, and I think I do a good job at it because I use these technical skills every day in my work, and have had to develop a comfortable, thorough understanding of the math and physics involved. When you have had to develop the mental imagery and mental tools to understand a subject well enough to use it every day in your work (and hopefully not make any mistakes), then you can usually do a good job of explaining and motivating a subject in a new learner.
Like, when I explain transmission line theory to a new EE at work, I can talk about lots of practical pertubations and their effects on both simulated and measured signal quality, eye diagrams, etc. Or if I'm tutoring a new EE in doing more complicated SPICE simulations, I can motivate and illustrate the points with lots of practical talking points that we can do on-screen, or walk out into the lab and set up with instrumentation, or both. And when I'm helping high school students with calculus or graphing functions or word problems, I can bring lots of mental imagery and other mental tools into the discussion, and adjust my discussion real-time, depending on what the student is understanding and what they are having trouble with.
To paraphrase Cyrus's tounge-in-cheek (Grrrrr) comment, "Those that do it well and are motivated make the best teachers."
When you use something every day in your highly technical work, you really have to have developed an intuitive understanding of the how and the why and the underpinnings and motivations and visualizations for the subject. I'm not a teacher per se, but I certainly end up tutoring (students from grammar school through college) or mentoring other EEs in their work, and I think I do a good job at it because I use these technical skills every day in my work, and have had to develop a comfortable, thorough understanding of the math and physics involved. When you have had to develop the mental imagery and mental tools to understand a subject well enough to use it every day in your work (and hopefully not make any mistakes), then you can usually do a good job of explaining and motivating a subject in a new learner.
Like, when I explain transmission line theory to a new EE at work, I can talk about lots of practical pertubations and their effects on both simulated and measured signal quality, eye diagrams, etc. Or if I'm tutoring a new EE in doing more complicated SPICE simulations, I can motivate and illustrate the points with lots of practical talking points that we can do on-screen, or walk out into the lab and set up with instrumentation, or both. And when I'm helping high school students with calculus or graphing functions or word problems, I can bring lots of mental imagery and other mental tools into the discussion, and adjust my discussion real-time, depending on what the student is understanding and what they are having trouble with.
To paraphrase Cyrus's tounge-in-cheek (Grrrrr) comment, "Those that do it well and are motivated make the best teachers."