Toughest teaching challenges

I'd say it's "Something the students think they know".

I have known that it is far easier to teach things we don't care about than things that we are passionate about. After all, it is difficult to reveal our feelings to our students who might like to rip our ideas as well as our ideals apart. But this is an important part of becoming a teaching philosopher. Are we to allow our inner most interests to turn into cannon fodder or are we more tempted to operate secretly behind a veil of being unknown! Most educators put down what their research areas are without going any further. Their bios reads more about what they have accomplished rather than what they are passionate about. And in my judgement they don't wish to take it any further than that especially with students. I know more than students so why put my ideas up for scrutiny. Yet it is these inner interests that can ultimately connect us to our students or have us passing them by as far as possible that causes much of the problems with the world of academics today. If our own students don't know us based on our ideas however off or flimsy, how are they going to feel about their own developing interests? In this area, we like our students to enter competitions that value their ideas or cut them down like deadwood! But yet the world isn't white or black and we can do more to help shape our students interests than simply being a bystander!