I had a teacher that routinely did this.
I hated it.
The issue is that, at least for me, I'm madly trying to capture in my notes whatever it is the teacher was presenting. Then, on "step 15" we get the "Oh, did anyone notice this on Step 3?" and then they'd erase the board and we'd start again.
I never felt it was an interesting technique, especially early on, when, again, at least for me, I'm just trying to absorb everything. I don't know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and still barely understand what I'm doing. Many times one can succeed by blindly following a process without understanding, and over time that understanding arrives, aided by repetition and application of the examples.
Folks learn differently with different ways. This was not an effective teaching technique for me.
Ideally, you should only work at learning something if you don't know it. Repetition wastes a lot of time to get that guarantee, but it would be much more efficient to just recognize where you're weak and work at that. It's a rather lazy meta-learning strategy to just throw spaghetti at the wall until everything sticks.
I think it's fine if someone chooses to learn this way, but it's unfair to expect all the other students to waste their time---I really hated when math teachers assigned 30 problems of homework, because I didn't need 30 of the same problem to know how to solve it, and almost no one does. Really, you only need repetition for a small percent of the content, it's just what "clicks" for each person is different.
I appreciated what my high school chemistry teacher did instead: all problem sets were optional, but there were recommended problems. Then, we had tests every two weeks which we were allowed to retake, but only once we solved the problems. That way, we quickly see if we're missing any knowledge and are forced to learn it for a good grade.
> I had a teacher that routinely did this.
> I hated it.
> The issue is that, at least for me, I'm madly trying to capture in my notes whatever it is the teacher was presenting.
I've observed this relation for myself, but the causality in my experience has clearly been reversed: it's not really possible for me to pay much attention to what is being taught when I'm working so hard just to write it down. Taking sparse, partial notes— or no notes at all— always left me way more room to think about the material.
This kind of approach works a lot better when you have a competent textbook that you can actually take home, which is only occasionally the case for high schoolers and almost never the case for elementary schoolers. When you have a decent textbook you can always make 'slow notes' from that at your leisure, if you really need them, and you can also do the readings before class so that all you need from the lecture is to fill in gaps.
But either way, trying to copy down the whole board is almost always the wrong way to take notes unless you are typing and can do so much more quickly than the board changes, IME. It's just way too much overhead and doesn't leave enough room for substantive engagement.
Photograph the board?
I think it works well for the early grades with simple problems like 5x5=24 to get young kids interested or your vs you’re
But anything beyond that anything multi step is just not useful - you talk about taking notes young kids are not taking notes
This is only slightly related, but if you don't understand, what value do your notes actually have? Or is this an environment with no lecture recordings, digital presentations or notes shared with the class..? I ask out of a genuine curiosity, since I know many people benefit from live note taking. I can only imagine notes being useful if they constituted a synthesis of the teacher's guidance.
Gilbert Strang would do a version of this too: appearing to work through problems on the fly and asking the audience for help, when of course he had come up with the problems himself and made them readily solvable to illustrate the concept he was teaching.
You can see instances of this in his last lecture in 2023.
Linear Algebra was the math subject I was strongest in during college and I give all credit to Gilbert Strang. He was the best to ever do it.
Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer"
A bit tangential but, when a teacher asks if anyone knows x, he/she doesn't want the nerd wiseguy who actually knows to answer, he wants someone who is unsure to answer so that everyone can participate in the learning experience.
When a teacher does that every class, multiple times a class, it becomes agonizingly boring for the students who actually understand what is going on. The long silences while no one is willing to raise their hand are painful and irritating. That kind of thing is exactly what pushes the 'nerd' to act the part of the 'wiseguy', sighing as he raises his hand, blurting an answer out out-of-turn, etc. It's also a good way to encourage your smartest students to completely disengage and sleep through class.
The more the class consists of exercises like this, the more it feels like a waste of the more advanced students' time and the greater the sense of distance it creates between the more advanced students and the ones who are slower or more behind.
You'd be better off just putting the more middling, slower or less consistent students in the hotseat than asking if 'anyone' knows the answer, and then whenever their answer has a problem asking if anyone can rephrase or reframe the thing just taught in a way that makes more sense to the unsure student, then ask the student who answered earlier if they're satisfied with that answer or if it's not quite rock solid for them. That way, the more advanced students can at least still participate in moving the discussion forward in a non-antagonistic way (if you are ruthless about prohibiting mockery of incorrect or partial answers).
Same thing if you ask questions that have multiple somewhat obvious answers but only accept one oral answer per student (maybe take additional written answers for credit as homework or a bonus or just some kind of feedback, to make it easier to adhere to that rule). Then your more eager students are more opening up the floor for more reluctant students than just preempting them.
While this approach can engage some students, it risks confusing others and potentially eroding trust. A balanced method might involve planned "mistakes" alongside clear, accurate instruction.
This is very 1990s chain-email glurge story.
To be clear, this appears to be a work of fiction?
Are people taking this to be a real life account, and if so whats the basis for that. I'm not seeing anything on this blog to indicate otherwise.
That’s my read on it. Far too tidy, pitched to make you feel just so. If it’s real, so many details are missing that it may as well not be.
I teach math to smart nerdy high schoolers. I do this. It's great! Fun for everyone :)
Do this too often and you risk losing the trust of your students, however.
> It’s about finding someone who’s not ashamed to fail in front of you—and then figuring out the answers together.
Students aren't going to lose trust in their teacher over mistakes. Establishing core concepts while tripping over details breeds humility for correction when real mistakes are made by the teacher and helps show students that it's okay to make mistakes. This brings more attention to the value of double-checking one's work and the opportunities for correction give purpose to their learning.
Depends on how many mistakes they make each lecture. I had one math teacher in high school that our whole class basically gave up on because he was useless. The only way for us to actually get at the material was read the textbook outside of class and explain it to each other.
Only if you let the mistake go unmentioned. I do a version of this where I glibly include a mistake, like:
// Examples of dereference operator.
int i, *ip = ..., **ipp = ...;
i = *ip; // Assuming ip has been correctly initialized.
i = **ipp; // Likewise.
// The address-of operator is the opposite.
ip = &i;
ipp = &&i;
If this is the lesson where you're introducing pointers to students, you're probably doing them a disservice. Reminds me of my engineering professors who were bored with the material, so they dove straight into difficult problems.
I see what the mistake is! You are using some sort of gibberish instead of using JavaScript and naming your variables with clear and verbose intent.
I’d be worried administration thought I had dementia and would be removed.
Great article.
It reminds me of another anecdote, regarding a university professor who told his students that he would deliberately include one falsehood in each lecture, and the students were charged with listening carefully and identifying the 'mistake' in each class.
For the very last class in the course, the professor trolled his students by not including any mistake.
Kai Chang's "Dr. K" in economics (2008)
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/my-favorite-liahtml - https://zenmoments.org/my-favorite-liar/
"let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie."
Ah, that must have been it. Thanks for the link!