Teacher Tip#3: Know Your Subject

I'm a high school math teacher. I've taught everything from applied mathematics, informal geometry, algebra 1 regular, honors, and all the way to IB. If you want students to buy into what you're saying, you need to know what you're talking about.

Teacher Tip#3: Know your subject.

My biggest pet-peeve is when I see an algebra teacher teaching systems of equations. If the result comes out 0 = 4 or 0 = 0, they teach the students that this means that there's no solution. Yet, this is incorrect. If you end up with 0 = 4, for example, that's never true, therefore, the system of linear equations would have no solution. They would be inconsistent and if you graph them this means the lines are parallel. But if you end up with 0 = 0, this is always a true statement. This means that the system of linear equations has infinitely many solutions. It's consistent and dependent. And if you were to graph the two linear equations, they would graph as the same line. Totally different answers.

Teachers who don't know their subject well and try to "wing it" are often discovered by their students. Students lose their respect for their teacher when they feel they know more than their teacher. This in turn becomes a problem for the teacher with classroom management.

So word to the wise, learn your content and learn it well.