It’s practice expanding my definition of what it means to be a successful student.

Good poetry workshops have as much to do with listening as they do with talking; good poetry teachers are those with finely tuned ears, not fine pedigrees.

My office hours, and generally those of the faculty in the math department, are drop-in. That means that you can show up and expect me to b...

I think there’s a more general point here about the tendency to teach specific knowledge, rather than fundamental knowledge along with the skills to generalize it, but I’m too tired to come to any real conclusion right now.

There’s an implied pedagogy in typical textbook design. The drudgery of textbooks to me is in the repetition of paint-by-numbers mathematics.

I have to apologize because this is not the normal sort of question for this site, but there have been times in the past where MO was remarkably helpful and kind to undergrads with similar types of

Emily Riehl is rewriting the foundations of higher category theory while also working to make mathematics more inclusive.

We have a part our school day dedicated to tutoring and reteaching. Every kid deserves to go to a school where they are always safe and never bored. There is a tremendous amount of intellectual labor that goes into good teaching. Every great teacher knows this and we think that in order to be a great school, we should provide and protect our teachers’ time to do it. We will not be back in the same building until next school year, but the school is not the building. We aren’t safe from the world, but we can feel the safety of teachers and classmates celebrating our successes and learning from our errors.

But you can tell a lot about a teacher by how they respond when students don’t succeed. Some will say, “What’s wrong with you?” Others will ask, “What’s wrong with me?” great teachers know three things: they know their subject, they know how to explain their subject, and they know their students. Knowing the history of a topic, the interesting problems, the common misconceptions, the multiple approaches, the links to other topics. And it’s about expert communication of all of that. They co-create educational experiences with their students because they realize that students hold key knowledge of their own that most don’t acknowledge or even recognize.

of work I poured into our course blog. Every student contributed two posts to the blog, and I gave multiple rounds of detailed feedback on all twelve posts, learning a lot from the students in the process. ​ and especially not Jekyll, since having a working Ruby environment is the hardest problem in computer science

But it is quite difficult to find a level of teaching which is comprehensible and at the same time interesting to an entire class with heterogeneous background. The shape of the mathematics education of a typical student is tall and spindly. It reaches a certain height above which its base can support no more growth, and there it halts or fails. But once you really understand it and have the mental perspective to see it as a whole, there is often a tremendous mental compression.

Die HSR Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil begrüsste zusammen mit Google und Digital Asset rund 300 Informatikerinnen und Informatiker aus der ganzen Welt zum 6. Haskell Hackathon. Die jährlich stattfindende Konferenz knackte zum ersten Mal die 300er-Teilnehmergrenze. Sie richtet sich sowohl an ausgewiesene Experten der Programmiersprache Haskell wie auch an interessierte Anfänger. Studierende der HSR, der ETH und weiterer Hochschulen hatten somit die Möglichkeit, vom 9. – 11. Juni 2017 unmittelbar in die Community einzutauchen. Mehr Informationen unter www.hsr.ch/medien

I think we should levy a fee for category theorists to use the word “just”

Learning starts with metacognition, and in order to metacognify (it’s a word) well, your students need you to be transparent in your pedagogical choices. ​ Be honest with yourself about how much time you spend working and how much time you need to work.

Give yourself permission to feel your feelings, even if they are crappy. Feeling less than positive and then beating yourself up for not being positive enough helps nobody. ​ Accept the gifts, you’re not a drain on anybody, you’re not failing at anything, you’re just sick right now, there are people who love you and value you who are rooting for you to get better and who will gladly take up the work of helping you do that if it means they get more “you” in the world, not just You, The Great Scholar, With So Much Potential but the present Januaryish you who is in a shitty mood, feeling pessimistic about credit scores and summer jobs. Let the people in your life give you what they can, stop telling yourself you don’t deserve it. When you can, you will pay it forward. Right now, eat the love sandwich. ​ Another step: Practice turning “I’m sorry” into “Thank you” as much as you can. “I’m so sorry I’m behind on this conference paper draft” = “Thank you for reading my draft.” “I’m so sorry this is costing you a fortune” = “Thank you for the help.” “I’m so sorry I’m falling behind in my dissertation” = “Thank you for giving me permission to take the time to heal.”

by Taeyoon Choi

“@jckarter @kylebshr I’d caution against judging any language’s teaching potential via toy examples of string manipulation that never happen in real life. More important is how the learning curve progresses into day 2, day 20, day 200.”

There's also a useful version of such critical remarks which can be made. One wants two things: (a) remarks which help people understand their own potential better; and (b) remarks which help people better understand what's involved in working in a particular field.— Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen) November 24, 2018