This is a point that I take to heart but I find it difficult to make that last step to show others what I've learned out of fear of being factually incorrect. How do you overcome this hurdle?
"...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate." Douglas Adams, _H2G2_
I've embraced this. Yes, by gum, I will stand in front of a room full of people who have paid thousands of dollars each to be there, I will plow thru the material with gusto and enthusiasm, I will create content on the fly if I have to based on my experience and skill, and if I make a mistake or slam into an embarrassing dead end then I will accept it and use it as a teaching moment to explain that even the best make mistakes or get stuck and that I'll get them a correct answer ASAP and in the meantime we will either start the topic over or move on to the next one. This is reality, this is me, this is what real developers have to deal with, and I'm not going to apologize (per se) for it.
No fear. No apologies. Do the best you can in front of an audience because you love the material. If you're going to be inaccurate, then be _definitively_ inaccurate.
The less impressive teachers start their talk with a "I am not an expert" statement which in my opinion is lame. Get up, speak with authority and present what you know in your way. If an error is made, or someone identifies a Better way, acknowledge it and move on. If you make a big deal about it, it just gets awkward and painful. So move on! It gets easier with experience. Start with smaller groups, your friends, or your favorite employees so there is no pressure.
In the last training section I ran I hijacked 7 of my employees to sit through the talk. For me this is a no pressure scenario and nothing to lose. It went well, and when I moved to a larger possibly hostile audience I knew what to expect... As my employees were already brutally honest and I survived.
Also, if you are wrong, better to learn it now (that's why you learn so much faster as the teacher) than complete life and never know! When I'm wrong I take that as a positive thing, the case where I probably learned more than the student did.
IMO, when you are in a situation where you have to teach, ultimately you realize that you both know your subject material well enough to help out people who are new to the material even if you might get minor details wrong.
And in the event that you get something important wrong (it's happened to me, FWIW), people know that you are human-- as long as you're willing to own up and figure out where you are wrong (and actually do have a bit of mastery over the larger material) most students are happy to be learning along with you.
The only way to overcome is to actually make mistakes and practice dealing with them.
Fortunately, the more you teach, the more you will find opportunities to deal with your misunderstandings of the world.
Language-wise, though, while I might know a certain language up to a certain level of fluency, I won't offer to teach that level to someone else. If I'm fluent (or intermediate), I'll have no problem teaching up to intermediate (or beginner) level.
Teaching something to show you are retaining it isn't the best way to go, though teaching something to show you have retained it is better.
or darling To mike an speling, grandma, or punctuation error,
Yeah, a lot of people who do have something interesting to say remain silent through fear of something irrelevant being picked up on and used as the basis for abuse. Something I don't recall seeing here.
ctdonath|14 years ago
I've embraced this. Yes, by gum, I will stand in front of a room full of people who have paid thousands of dollars each to be there, I will plow thru the material with gusto and enthusiasm, I will create content on the fly if I have to based on my experience and skill, and if I make a mistake or slam into an embarrassing dead end then I will accept it and use it as a teaching moment to explain that even the best make mistakes or get stuck and that I'll get them a correct answer ASAP and in the meantime we will either start the topic over or move on to the next one. This is reality, this is me, this is what real developers have to deal with, and I'm not going to apologize (per se) for it.
No fear. No apologies. Do the best you can in front of an audience because you love the material. If you're going to be inaccurate, then be _definitively_ inaccurate.
K2h|14 years ago
In the last training section I ran I hijacked 7 of my employees to sit through the talk. For me this is a no pressure scenario and nothing to lose. It went well, and when I moved to a larger possibly hostile audience I knew what to expect... As my employees were already brutally honest and I survived.
Also, if you are wrong, better to learn it now (that's why you learn so much faster as the teacher) than complete life and never know! When I'm wrong I take that as a positive thing, the case where I probably learned more than the student did.
jreeve|14 years ago
personlurking|14 years ago
Teaching something to show you are retaining it isn't the best way to go, though teaching something to show you have retained it is better.
huggyface|14 years ago
alan_cx|14 years ago
Yeah, a lot of people who do have something interesting to say remain silent through fear of something irrelevant being picked up on and used as the basis for abuse. Something I don't recall seeing here.