🚀 go-pugleaf

I think these things cut both ways...the two edged sword.  Here 
is a few of the best and the worst of my learning experiences.

Worst:
College Professor, teaching circuit theory, what he taught had 
nothing to do with the rest of the curriculum or the level of 
knowledge the students had.  His opinion of what the student 
should know before taking HIS class was completely disjoint from 
what the students knew actually knew.

Next to Worst:
Summer course on Engineering statics and dynamics, five days a 
week at 7AM.  Ten minute Pop quiz started class every day.  One 
question on the quiz.  Class average for all tests was below 25%. 
Typical question would be: "Such and such a sphere with such and 
such rotational speed sliding down incline with such and such 
coefficient of friction.  How far will it slide before it starts 
rolling without slipping."

I never saw such a bunch of demoralized students in my life.

Above Average:
Compile writer from HP teaching course at local community college 
teaching advanced Pascal.  I took the course because of his 
technical knowledge.  I was experienced in Pascal so I kept 
asking these leading questions which I knew would expose 
interesting aspects of language.  This would invariably lead 
other students to get involved.  He resented the questions, a 
dynamic that I had noticed when I came to California and only the 
past 15 years.  Previous to that in Arizona I had never seen a 
teacher discourage questions.  At the end of the semester he 
mentioned that he thought that the class was the most involved of 
any he had ever taught.  It was obvious he was not aware of the 
dynamic of the question asking I did and how it simulated the 
class.

Excellent:
In my Arizona high school our Algebra II and Trig class consisted 
of small town kids who had grown up together, started a science 
club in grade school, and a few of which would come over to my 
house and Dad would show us stuff in his little chemistry lab or 
machine shop when we were in grade school.

In the Algebra II and Trig class we had a level of excellence 
that I have never seen since.  The class average was 99% and we 
were competing for first place with averages ranging from 99.5% 
to 99.8%.  The tests and homework was hard.  Several of us placed 
in the top ten in the state wide math contest.  One year I placed 
first in the state.

The course was not watered down as you might think from the 
grades.  There were one or two hours of home work almost every 
night.  The standards were pretty tough in the school.  When a 
student came to our schools from California, it was pretty 
standard that he/she would be put back one grade level.

One of the Best:
I won't say the best because I can think of many examples of good 
learning experiences, but a very recent example was at the just 
completed ParcPlace, Digitalk conference.  

Steven T. Abell of ParcPlace Systems presented ValueInterface 
which he designed and built for ParcPlace.  His presentation was 
crystal clear and several participants said it was the best 
session they had attended at the conference.  Among other things, 
Steve teaches an intermediate course for ParcPlace and does some 
programming for A.G.  The ValueInterface is a very nice little 
framework for ValueModel.