Saturday, December 29, 2012

Teaching a Class Without Content Knowledge

An untimely combination of personnel changes, department shuffling, and volunteerism left me in the unique position of teaching a high school psychology class with zero psychology background this school year. 15 weeks in I've found 5 great things are happening in class that I'm not sure would be happening if I had even a small amount of pre-existing content knowledge.

1. I'm able to model how I learn new things to the students constantly; I show them how to learn something new rather than tell them about content I already know. I discuss apps & resources I use to help me learn, and celebrate the process of learning alongside the written curriculum.

2. I participate in my own activities, and use the resources I create with the students to learn the material together; I have a unique opportunity to assess my materials as learning tools. I'm able to see what I'm doing and using from a first time learner's perspective.

3. My lack of overall content knowledge focuses the course on the process of learning and the sharpening of skills; what we're doing in psychology promotes lifelong learning far more than my AP U.S. history class' curriculum.

4. As I learn these new concepts and debate & discuss with students, I able to show and model my love of learning in ways I'm rarely able to as the room "expert." New and interesting points raised by students are truly new and interesting to me.

5. When I ask the class what they think about the theories of behavior development I ask the question because I legitimately wonder what they think because I'm not sure if I know what I think yet; the class has developed a great culture of learning from each other.

Obviously it's preferable to have content knowledge in any endeavor, but even the silver lining can provide some important insights and highlight great unintended developments and practice.