Pleasant and useful in teaching

Hello! A year ago, I wrote an article about how I organized a university course in signal processing . Judging by the reviews, the article has a lot of interesting ideas, but it is large and difficult to read. And I have long wanted to break it into smaller ones and write them more clearly.

But writing the same thing two times somehow fails. In addition, this year significant problems in the organization of this course made themselves felt. Therefore, I decided to write several articles about each of the ideas separately, to discuss the pros and cons.

This null article is an exception. In it - about the motivation of the teacher. About why it is good to teach - it is useful and enjoyable both for yourself and for the world.

What drives me

First of all, it is interesting and pleasant to me! I’ll try to formulate what exactly.

I like to come up with some rules by which others will have to live at least a semester. I like to improve the ready-made rules that already exist or have been built by me. So that they become better, they solve some problems that I or students have.

A good course requires a lot: to select material, reasonably arrange it by semester, learn to explain clearly and interestingly, think out an adequate and stimulating reporting system for students. Designing such a course is not only a very interesting, but also practically useful task. It can be solved endlessly. Intermediate improvements can be observed in practice - in research problems with such improvements observed in practice it is usually bad, teaching can compensate for this.

Of course, I also like to share my knowledge - it seems that I look smarter and more attractive from this. I’m somehow at the head of the audience. I like that at least someone is listening to me, and carefully. Does what I think is right. Plus, the status of a teacher in itself creates a pleasant halo.

But interesting and nice - that’s not all. Teaching makes me better: more knowledgeable, more capable.

I have to go deeper into the material. I don’t want the students to look at me condemningly and think: “There’s nothing else to do but read us some nonsense, which he himself does not consider it necessary to understand.”

When students roughly understand the material, they begin to ask questions. It happens that questions turn out to be smart and bring them closer to the unknown. It sometimes happens that the question itself contains a thought that did not occur to us before. Or somehow incorrectly taken into account.

It happens that new knowledge emerges from the results of student work. For example, students doing practical tasks or improving course materials, offer new algorithms for me, formulas for assessing quality. Maybe I even heard about these ideas before, but still I couldn’t get myself to understand. And then they come and say: “Why not add it to the course? It's better than what it is, that's why ...” - and you have to figure it out, you won’t run away.

In addition, teaching is an active practice of communication with students. I answer their questions, trying to be clear and not to go into the jungle.

In the course of communication, I involuntarily evaluate the abilities and hard work of students. Then, these grades are automatically reconciled with what the student really did. It turns out in itself that I am learning to evaluate the potential of other people.

It happens to learn interesting facts about the structure of the world. For example, this year I had a chance to feel how different student flows can be with a difference of only one year.

How else can teaching help the teacher?

There are a few ideas.

• Students can be used to test research hypotheses. Yes, I do not think that using students' work on the subject for their own purposes is neither ethical nor bad. On the contrary, students feel that what they are doing is really necessary. This is a pleasant sensation, it stimulates a better performance of tasks.
• You can understand how different people will respond to your words. Learn to communicate more effectively.
• You can conduct experiments to organize teamwork.
• You can meet future specialists in your field. You may then have to work with some of them. And perhaps some of the students will like it, and then you will invite him to your work. Observing a person during the semester, you can get to know him much better than a few interviews.

Well, in sad moments, you can recall that you gave a lot to someone a piece of your knowledge and experience. They are not lost =)