It is hard to say, "I don't know." As teachers (and teaching assistants), we repeatedly assure our students that there are no stupid questions. It's okay for students not to have all the answers. After all, that's why they're taking courses in the first place. But what does it mean when a teacher doesn't have all the answers either? Does saying, "I don't know" imply an admission of incompetence? Or can we use our own lack of knowledge to facilitate learning?

In 1998, I was awarded a teaching assistantship for Introduction to Multimedia, a course designed to teach Fine Arts students how to create Internet and multimedia projects. I had applied for the position because I had always wanted to learn how to create a website. I figured that I would never find the time unless I was teaching the subject, in which case I would be forced to learn the material (inside and out, at that). I had no qualifications for the course. Really. But the course director was persuaded by my assertion that I was comfortable with computers and that I had confidence in my ability to learn the necessary concepts and techniques.

That first year proved quite difficult. I taught two three-hour labs of 25 students each week. Although the students also attended a weekly hour-long lecture with the course director, the TAs taught all the hands-on techniques in the computer lab at Winters College. The course director provided a weekly outline and designed the assignments; the TAs determined how to approach and teach the labs. Basically, I managed to keep ahead of the students by about one to two weeks.

Frequently, my students would ask me, "What about these other techniques?" Generally not knowing the answer, I would reply, "Uh... We'll be covering that soon." Immediately after class, I would desperately search for the answer so that I could teach it the following week.

I was too embarrassed to acknowledge my ignorance about the subject. I was afraid to tell my students that I had never TA'd the course before, or even taken it or anything like it. I was afraid that to admit to a lack of knowledge was to admit to inadequacy. I was afraid that saying, "I don't know" would result in students glancing at each other in disbelief, dropping the course while muttering, "She's a complete fraud."

What I learned during my second year of TAing for the same course, however, was that I still didn't know all the answers. Students encountered new problems with new software. I started to notice that "I don't know" was an answer occasionally provided by other more experienced TAs, or even the course director himself. Amazingly, the students weren't walking out. In fact, the course was invariably full (over 200 students were enrolled).

Moreover, informal course evaluations indicated that students regularly considered it one of their favourite courses.

Instead of delaying my response to my students' questions with the excuse that the answer would be taught "soon," I began to admit that I didn't always know. I began to ask the class if anyone else knew the answers. An amazing thing happened. I began to learn from my students and they began to learn from each other. Admitting ignorance resulted in at least two positive outcomes:

1. it developed the relationship between students and teacher, and
2. it sparked student participation.

When I admitted that I did not know an answer, my students came to trust me. Unafraid to acknowledge my own lack of knowledge, I showed them they could be less afraid to admit their ignorance and uncertainties (which could then be addressed). Moreover, my imperfections demonstrated that I am a human being rather than a lean, mean, marking machine, which made students feel more at ease when approaching me with questions and ideas. Better yet, my ignorance offered students the opportunity to enlighten me with their own information. They felt empowered by their knowledge and students discovered that it was possible to learn from each other.

Students were excited to share their expertise with classmates. Students discovered that their classmates had a wealth of knowledge that they could access when I was busy with other students, or when they were working on projects outside of our lab time. Students came to realize that, while I am a good resource, I am not necessarily the only–or even the best–resource available in the class.

For instance, I taught basic techniques of Photoshop, a sophisticated program that enables students to create and manipulate their own images. As a graduate student in music, I have never been particularly proficient as a visual artist, nor did I have extensive experience with the program. However, many of my students had used Photoshop as Design or Visual Arts majors. In my first year of teaching, if a student asked me how to execute a particular technique in Photoshop, I would have said, "we'll be covering that next week." Now, I simply said, "I don't know. Does anyone else know if this is possible?" Usually, someone did.

The effectiveness of admitting "I don't know" was reinforced when I held my first course directorship last year, a world music course. I obviously included a unit on my specialty, Celtic music, but I also covered sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and India. Before the course, I had only the barest knowledge of music in any of the latter three areas. When I discovered that several of my students had actually been involved with some of the musical cultures first hand, my immediate reaction was to feel threatened, fearing that these students would find mistakes in my lectures. Instead, they often were able to reinforce what I taught, augmenting the information I presented with colourful stories about their own personal experiences with the music. These stories brought the cultures to life for the other students, and enabled them to relate to these cultures. Even when students disagreed with what I had to say, we were able to engage in a discussion about multiple perspectives, and explore the kinds of information that academia values. Sometimes students asked questions that just hadn't yet been addressed in the literature. My admission of "I don't know" helped students to see that we were only scratching the surface of these cultures. On one memorable occasion, one student took it upon herself to find the answer to an unsolved class question. She did find the answer, which we then shared with the rest of the class.

I must admit, I still occasionally find it hard to say, "I don't know." As a teacher, it sometimes feels as though I should have all the answers. And yet I have chosen to pursue graduate work because I recognize that there is always so much more to learn. Is the admission of "I don't know" the best or only way to deal with a lack of knowledge in the classroom? Predictably, my answer is, I don't know. But I'm hopeful that my admission will open the topic up for discussion and thereby give everyone the opportunity to learn something from my experience.