The mountain road

I find that one of the hardest things as a teacher is to remember how hard things are for people who don’t already know something you know well. The problem is that I become so used to doing something, day in and day out (like programming in Java) that I lose track of how odd and exotic each of its concepts and particulars are to someone who doesn’t already know them.

Which makes teaching a class partly a process of feeling my way along, like driving up a twisting mountain road on a foggy night. On one side is the mountain — the things they don’t know. I can drive straight up the mountain face if I like, but they can’t follow me there. As soon as I steer too much that way, I can see the light go out in their eyes, replaced by a look of panic.

But if I err the other way, neglecting to drive uphill at all, focusing too much on the stuff they already know, then we never actually go up the mountain — we end up just driving around in circles, and everybody gets bored (including me).

After a while you develop a feel for when to drive fast, what the best slope is, where the nasty curves are along the way. But every class is different, and you really need to gauge how this particular class is dealing with each new concept.

The most important thing is to pay attention. No matter how many times you’ve driven up that mountain, or how well you think you know each twist and turn of the road ahead, you still should not be driving with your eyes closed.