interactivechalkboard:

“When I first began teaching, one of my students asked me a great question. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ll go home tonight and do some research. Why don’t you go home and look too. Tomorrow we’ll compare notes and see if we can find the answer”. My more experienced co-teacher was horrified; she…

I’m currently being taught to do exactly what you outlined.

I think it’s ridiculous your mentor told you to make it up on the spot. You are not a vessel of all the knowledge in the world, and you shouldn’t be expected to be! Students appreciate honesty.

I’ll be doing exactly the same. I’ll make sure I know what I’m teaching and I’m confident about what I’m teaching so I can teach it well. But I’m not going to pretend I’m the font of all knowledge.

What you did is more valuable than spoon-feeding the student crap and potentially false information. You taught them to not be afraid of being wrong. You taught them that if you don’t know about something, the best thing to do is go and find out about it.

I have to agree that this was an excellent approach.  I’ve seen teachers try to make up information on the spot, and frequently it’s incorrect and does more harm than good.  Furthermore, as I can tell you from experience having been fed such wrong information, it’s a really good way to make a parent very unhappy when their child comes home telling them that they learned something the parent may know is actually false.  That is not a good reputation to have.

Honesty is important with one’s students.

I have had daydreams about the first time this happens in my own classroom.  Because the first time this happens, it’s going to lead to a spontaneous discussion about how to research and find answers, and we’re going to walk through it together, and it’s going to be a magical teachable moment.

Or at least, that’s how it works in my head.  In real life it might be something that falls in the middle of a hundred other things.  The dream teachable moments in my head may be tantamount in their level of potential realistic application to a group musical number.