Eric Kam: Turning Economics into Edutainment

Scott Wolla (VO): Welcome to Teach Economics from the St. Louis Fed, where we offer field-tested wisdom and practical advice that that can help bring economics to life in your classroom. On this episode, I’m joined by Eric Kam, professor of economics at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric’s research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary economics, and international monetary economics. He is also known for teaching large sections, meaning he regularly teaches classes of hundreds, if not thousands, of students. We’ll start with Eric’s journey to the field and how it’s connected to a previous Teach Economics guest, Avi Cohen.

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Wolla: What initially sparked your interest in economics?

Eric Kam: Well, that answer has two equal but separate parts. The first is that in 1986 I walked into York University in Toronto, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I liked math, but I knew I didn’t want to be a math major because, frankly, that seemed kind of boring.

So I really went in search of the discipline that spoke to me. And on September 7, 1986, my first class, my first day, 10:00 in the morning, I had a professor named Avi Cohen, who was teaching me introduction to microeconomics. And the experience really changed my life in two ways. The first was I found economics. I found a discipline that looked like math, but it wasn’t math, but it had a lot of quantitative and qualitative aspects. And I liked the way that it had decision rules and it just didn’t give open-ended answers; it gave closed-end answers. But sometimes you could debate whether that was right or wrong. And number two, I didn’t know what it was about this red-haired professor at the front of the room, but he looked like he was having so much fun. And as the term went on, my other first year professors couldn’t have looked more miserable. As if to say, why do I have to teach a bunch of first-year students?

But Avi-- he just gained momentum, and he gained energy. And you could see that he loved doing what he did. And two things hit me by the middle of first semester. Number one, this is what I wanted to major in. And number two, I wanted to be like that guy because he-- and I knew nothing about him at the at that point-- but I knew that he looked like he loved his job, and I wanted a job that I could love.

And truth be told, since I’ve been a student since 1973, I’ve always worshiped my teachers. I always thought they walked on water, and I always kind of figured I’d end up in front of a class, but I didn’t know if it would be a high school class or a university class. But watching Avi sealed the deal for me, and I said, that’s-- where I was standing, that’s, I think, where I want to stand one day.

Wolla: That’s great. In fact, we’ve had Avi on the show, and I can imagine that he is a phenomenal teacher. What is the value proposition for students, for economics? So when a student walks into your class, first day, and they, have question marks about, you know, what is this economics and why is it relevant to me? What’s the pitch?

Kam: The pitch for me is-- I think you should ask me that question when the course is over because I think you’ll answer it for yourself. But I really try to tell my students, you know, people debate what’s the most important lecture. And when I was in university, a lot of my professors argued it was the last lecture. What should I leave my class with? What’s my overarching message? And they’ll remember this into their 90s. And now that I’m a professor, I think that that couldn’t be more wrong. I think you have about the first 5 to 7 minutes of your class on the first day to get them and to make them look at you and think, “This person’s selling something that I might want to buy.”

And so what I do on the first day, other than, frankly, bore them with my life because I let my students into my life. They all know about my personal life. And I don’t care when people tell me that’s not how you do it, that’s how I do it. If they want to play along, great. And if they don’t, I understand that. But I tell them that economics affects them every single minute of every single day, and they have no idea because they don’t really know the topic. And even if they did it in high school, sure. Okay. So they’ve heard of supply or demand or elasticity. There’s a topic that rings a bell, but they haven’t really studied it. So I try to tell them, give me a chance to prove to you that there isn’t a minute that you are awake that economics isn’t impinging on you one way or the other.

And it really is a challenge. And some of them, of course, are really positive and say, I can’t wait to do this. And some of them are like, I’m here because my father made me, or some of them say, I have to do this for my degree. Other than that, I wouldn’t be here. But by the end of the semester, when we talk, I love when the students tell me, “I hated taking your course and it was my favorite class.”

Wolla: That’s great. That’s a great compliment. Let’s talk a little bit about scale. So you teach a class where you’re going to have over 3,000 students, and you teach large sections regularly. What’s it like walking into or logging onto a course with that many students?

Kam: So when I do it in person-- I’ve taught up to 900. And I can’t lie to you that I’ve discovered that to do this job right-- and I know that this makes some of my colleagues angry-- but I call it edutainment. It is a performance. And when people say it’s not supposed to be a performance, I tell them then you’ve never done it or you’ve never done it right. Because if you’re going to try to captivate 900 people for a couple of hours, you better be able to tap dance or sing or maybe know what you’re talking about on stage. And so what I do-- first I’ll tell you about in person-- I do two things. Number one, I try to be a little bit bigger than I really am, and I’m 5′5.”

But what I mean by that is I have a cordless microphone and a cordless clicker, and I am-- for those of you old enough to remember, I’m like Phil Donahue and I’m running through the lecture hall, and I’m up the stairs and I’m down the stairs. And if they put up their hand for a question, I run up to them and ask their question into the-- so I try to be proactive so that frankly-- I look a little bit like Sonic the Hedgehog, but they don’t really know where I’m going to go next. Part two is they never know what I’m going to say next, and again, not-- trust me. I get one email a semester from a student saying “I’ve paid my tuition. I didn’t pay it to come to a comedy club or to hear you sit through a therapy session about your parents and your wife and your kids.”

However, that is 1 or 2. Of the other almost thousand-- students seem to love that. When class gets a little bit sticky and hard and mathy, all of a sudden, I’ll just out of nowhere turn and say, “You would not believe what happened last Friday at my family’s Friday dinner,” and I’ll go into a whole story about how my father yelled at me.

My mother was condescending. My wife-- and they love it. I don’t care what anybody says. You can’t do it for three hours or you’re not doing your job. But every few minutes, as class gets a little bit hard and-- you know when you’re losing your students. They squirm, they fidget, they get up, they go-- I will just stop. And I will go into basically a diatribe on how I’m the biggest loser on the planet. And they enjoy it. So for me, that’s how I do. I do the lecture hall by being “big.”

Now online-- so I have taught 2,000 people online. That’s a whole different animal. Frankly, it’s not as much fun. What could be more fun than being in front of a class? But what I’ve tried to do is I’ve borrowed one thing that really works, and you may think to yourself it’s impossible, but when I’m in class, my front row-- they are my people. I pound on them, and by the second class, the people that don’t want to be a part of the act are far up into the lecture hall, and the ones who want to play are down in the front row.

But if you’re there in the second week, I am going to comment on your hair and your clothes and your girlfriend, and I’m just going to-- you’re going to be part of the show. And the hard part for me during Covid was-- and where I kind of panicked a little-- was how do I recreate the front row online? Well, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and the front row online are the people that turn on their cameras. And so, believe it or not, out of 2,000, maybe 20 or 30 have their cameras on—they’re in my front row. And so when I’m lecturing at home-- not unlike what we’re doing right now except my laptop would be open there—they’re the students I ask; they’re the students I pound on; they’re the students I use as part of the jokes. They’re the ones I ask questions. And-- little things like when I take a break-- because I just need a break to make coffee and relax-- I tell them, okay, it’s your class; you lead the lecture. And I leave on the microphone, and I listen and they talk about their stuff.

Right? Did anybody has anyone had that test in math? Did anyone see this movie? Did anyone see this movie, video? And they don’t realize that I’m absolutely using them as free labor. But I’ll give you just one more. I know I’m rambling, but the first time I did this, I sent an email to my front row-- online front row-- to their parents, and I said when I didn’t know what the hell to do during Covid, your son or daughter made my class a success by being so engaged, having their camera on, and, frankly, taking a beating. And I want to have them to my house for dinner, but I need your permission because they’re still kids. They all came and we had dinner at my house, and I got to thank them and meet them in person. You know, Scott, I guess I’m just blessed that I’ve taught 56,000 students. I know they don’t all like me, but I know most of them do.

And I love them whether they like me or not. And it’s just-- I was lucky that we talked about my first day of university. I just realized I can’t leave this place. This is where I’m meant to be.

Wolla: That’s great. And one thing that as I was listening to you, your humanity came through. Right? And so I can see how when you’re teaching a course with literally thousands of students, that’s really an important piece. I do have a question. Did you literally sing and dance?

Kam: I sing and dance. In fact, I sing a rap song every semester because it’s just one of the ways I can capture them-- is that I know what they’re listening to. And if they send me YouTube links to the songs they like, I’ll play them during lecture when we take a break and stuff. But the trade-off is I get to play my music.

So most of that, of course, is 1980s. But I always, just for fun, I ask them about-- do they like rap music? And I say, okay, what song? And they-- we play a rap song and I go, you know, it was a much better song when “Rappers Delight” came out, when the Sugarhill Gang did “Rapper’s Delight.” And they go, “I don’t know that song,” and I so—“What you hear is not a test.”

And I do about two minutes of it, and it might be the funniest part of the whole semester when I get a raving standing ovation from people who listen to this little guy singing in front of a lecture hall. It’s all an act, Scott. I know exactly what it is. It’s just I-- you know, I was director of teaching and learning, and that’s a whole other story. But about 100 professors asked me if I would sit in the back of their lecture hall and watch them teach. With no deans and no chairs, just give them feedback. And most of the feedback was when I’d say, “This is off the record, no paperwork. But we’re going to be honest. You stink, you’re boring. And I don’t know why anyone would listen to you because you’re teaching to yourself and you’re looking at the whiteboard the whole time.” I don’t forget what it was like sitting in Avi’s class, or every class I ever took when I was a student, and if there’s a thesis to what makes my core successful-- or I hope it’s successful-- is I try to teach the course I think I would have enjoyed to take because I don’t pretend that they can sit there for three hours and not move.

I don’t believe that getting through the whole textbook in 12 weeks is the goal. This is going to put a class-- they’re going to be comatose before you’re finished. And I don’t know what they’re going to learn. So really, in a lot of ways I lecture for me and I lecture to amuse myself. And I hope that they’re amused as well. And so far, so good.

Wolla: So, you have your front-row students and you have your students turning their cameras on. How do you ensure that the rest of the audience, whether it’s virtual or in person, is or engage?

Kam: It’s a leap of faith. When you’re in person, of course, you have eyes and you can see. And I’m always walking around the lecture hall, and I’m always walking in between the rows. And I know when they’re watching YouTube or they’re looking on FanDuel and making their sports bets, and I’ll make fun of that. By the way, I tell them, if you kind of have the audacity to be doing that in lecture, I have the audacity to call you out.

And I’ll say-- I’ll walk by a student on FanDuel and I’ll go, “You’re taking the Dodgers? Really? In this city?” And so that helps. It’s easy in person. It’s really easy in person. And I tell my students on the first day, “Listen, I only have one rule. When I talk, you listen. When you talk, I’ll listen.” And if you want to zone out and play on the internet, honestly, it’s okay. Just don’t be a disturbance. Don’t make noise; don’t laugh at things. If you don’t disturb the class, we’re all good. Now, that part is easier online because they don’t disturb the class if their camera’s off, their microphone’s off.

And so it’s a leap of faith, first of all, to know who’s even there. Because I know some people are dressed up as students, sound asleep in the background. I can’t fix that. But what I do is just use a lot of questions in my lecture. I ask a lot of questions. I ask students to answer things. I create things on the run. I encourage questions, and thank heaven I get a lot of them.

And the questions do come from some of the people whose cameras aren’t on. And so I know some of them are there. I don’t know if all of them are there. I’m not even kidding myself. They’re not all there. But you do the best, and you try to reach as many of them as you can. And over the years, things like asking questions, soliciting.

Sometimes I’ll even say to them in class-- we’ll be talking about-- I don’t know. I don’t even know how a country will come up, like Chile. And I’ll say, what’s the population of Chile? What’s the GDP of Chile? And they’ll be looking and I go, you have a computer, google it. That brings them in sometimes, and that wakes people up.

It’s hard to make them a part of the show, but I keep trying. And varying levels of success, really-- not depending year on year. It’s lecture after lecture. Some lectures they’re super engaged; some lectures they’re super not. Also, disclaimer-- I teach at 8:00 am. Some of them aren’t even awake until 9:30, and I know that too. So that’s another thing I have to tackle. But again, I encourage-- I go, listen, if you want to drink your coffee, eat your breakfast on camera-- good because that’s what I’m going to do too. And so again, these are all just tricks in the hopes that you can reach as many of them as possible. And the ones you can’t, well, you keep trying.

Wolla (VO): We’re going to take a short break. But when we come back, Eric will break down how he teaches a class of hundreds, even thousands, of students. A feat that includes being available 24/7 for students who need a little extra help. We’ll be right back.

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Wolla (VO): Welcome back to Teach Economics and my conversation with Eric Kam. Before the break, Eric explained that the value of economics is that it affects students every single minute of every single day, though most don’t realize it.

So how do you handle questions? You might have the student who is willing to raise their hand or to voice their question in front of their hundreds of other classmates. But you may also have a number of students that would rather not write. So how do you provide opportunities to make sure that students understand the material and can ask the questions?

Kam: That’s again a two-part answer. For every lecture, I have a student assistant, one of the front-row people, and I tell them, “You’re my assistant today; you’re my caddy. And if a student puts up their hand--” because I’m usually off on some tirade that I’m lecturing about-- “I need you to jump in and say, ‘Dr. Kam, there’s a question.’”

And then I answer that question. So I always-- and that, of course, brings in the student assistant, and it brings in the students-- that they know if they ask a question, I can find them. Now, what about the ones-- I teach at a school that has mostly first-generation Canadians. A lot of these students are nervous.

A lot of them are scared, and they don’t want to put up their hand in class. And frankly, I don’t blame them. That wasn’t my experience. I loved asking questions. But a lot of them don’t want to. So in my course outline and in my first lecture where I read it, I tell them I am available 24/7, and I know-- I even say this, by the way, I get in a little trouble.

I know that some of my colleagues and some of your professors have blackout periods with respect to email, and they don’t want to hear from you Fridays after 4:00 before Sunday. It’s 6:00, Mondays after 7:00. I tell them this is garbage and that I am a professor 24/7, so you can reach me 24/7, and I encourage them.

My class only works as a dialog. If I don’t hear from you, I failed. I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’re understanding. I don’t know if you’re enjoying it, so please don’t ever go to bed-- and this is in my outline-- please don’t ever go to sleep and think, “I think Dr. Kam can answer my question, but I don’t want to bother him.”

You bother him. There’s no question too dumb to brief, too complex. And if you don’t get it, you write back and go, “I still don’t get it.” And then we set up a private Zoom chat, one-on-one between me and the student. I really try to sell my course as a two-way street, and it’s pretty funny that when they do get comfortable, yes, you get a barrage of emails, but I think that’s part of my job.

I go to meetings of my faculty association, and people pull out the “I answered 412 emails this semester, and I don’t feel well compensated.” So my first comment is “I get that a week and you’re grossly overpaid, so chill out.” So I just try to tell my students to please email me as much as possible. And they do.

And what I like is-- we won’t even talk about the economics questions because those are almost obvious-- but then they get into football, and then they get into hockey, and then they get into, “Did your mother really say that? Because my mother says that too, and I don’t know how to deal with it.” And then I become part social worker.

But I think that’s actually part of the job, I really do. I think that being a professor, as much as it’s a calling, it’s also an obligation and a responsibility. And as a dad whose daughter goes to Queen’s University, if a student comes to me and has a problem, I’d be really upset if my daughter went to a professor-- because first of all, if you’re going to your professor, you’re at the end of your rope. You’ve exhausted everybody else. And if someone looked at my kid and said, “I’m not a social worker, get out of my office,” I’d be horrified. So that’s never the answer. So whether it’s economics, life, sports, I answer every email I get.

That’s another thing I tell them. If you don’t get an answer, I didn’t get your email. I answer everything, but I tell them it can be brief. It might be seven. Chapter six. No, my birthday. But I answer every single email. And again, it’s a tool. It gives them nothing they didn’t have anyway. Everything I offer is, in a sense, an illusion. But then they get the feeling, okay, Dr. Kam’s got my back. And I think that that helps.

Wolla: So I imagine that teaching large classes like that, you use TAs quite a bit. What’s your strategy for using that kind of support?

Kam: It’s hard because I have an army. I have 30 or 40 teaching assistants. In terms of relevance and sort of what they do best, number one is they hold office hours. They hold three hours of office hours a week. And before the midterm and the final, they’re swamped. When it’s not midterm and final time, they’re bored to tears, but they can do their own work and they get an office, a shared office. I generally don’t have my teaching assistants grade-- first of all, because I use multiple choice tests. But as I’m going to talk about later in a kind of a new venture I’m doing where I do have some written feedback-- the problem with teaching assistants, bless them, is the heterogeneity is humongous, and some of them are good graders and some of them are horrific graders.

And so in my always present state of “boy, I could be fired tomorrow--” which I guess I can’t-- but I do all the grading, and so I don’t want them to be put into positions of going over and above what they are able to do. So basically, I always tell my teaching assistants-- the easiest job on the planet-- if you’re my TA-- because I see colleagues of mine having them, you know-- they give out problem sets and they ask their TAs “Can you work out the answers?” And I just think that’s just a loser because a TA-- this could be an aspiring academic. I mean, you’re a role model and a guide for this person. So I put them in the positions where they’re going to succeed and only succeed.

And so for me, that is office hours invigilation. They are there at the exams to walk around and give the-- almost illusion that students can’t cheat even though we know they’re cheating. So I just put them in positions to win. So for me, mostly it’s office hours invigilation. And then if they’re eager and they write me and they say things like, you know, “I like monetary theory or I like pedagogy. Are you working on anything I can help you with?” well, then I give them that too. But I don’t let them grade. And I mostly don’t let them grade for two reasons. Number one, they’re not great at it. And number two, if I let them grade and then I have to regrade it, it’s actually less work to just let me grade it. So that’s where we are with TAs.

Wolla: So principles is oftentimes the only economics course that students will retain. Right? So it’s kind of the gateway. But for a lot of students it is like the only course. How do you think about that responsibility at scale? So you’re engaging with thousands of students and you are the face of the profession for students. How do you think about that responsibility? How does it influence your decision about what to cover and how much to cover?

Kam: Well, that’s been everything since the pandemic and ever since I took a bite of the economic literacy cookie. It’s made my life much easier because I believe in the literacy approach. I really like this concept of covering less topics but doing them much deeper. I think that gives them a better understanding, and it also gives me more latitude to figure out what topics are relevant when. For example, we went through a decade where inflation just didn’t happen in Canada.

It was it was non-existent, and there was no sense teaching it in any type of great depth, so I didn’t. Now it’s of the utmost importance, and so we dig into it much deeper. So I’d say the first way I do it is by following the tenants of the literacy approach, where I really cherry-pick the topics that I think they’re going to enjoy and I think are relevant.

And again, I don’t care how much of the textbook I cover. I’m not in a marathon; I don’t I see people cheering when they finish the last page of the textbook. I don’t care about that. I want to the students to take away-- I want them to learn. I want them to understand. So I tell them if we only do six chapters, don’t worry about it.

I promise you you’ll have everything you need to know to do second year. That’s the only assurance I make. So that guides me, number one. And then number two kind of dovetails into my latest vanity project, which is, as I’ve told you, somehow—again, it’s better to be lucky than good. I got asked to be on the radio one day, and that has now morphed into every day.

And I’m on the radio in all across Canada, from Vancouver to Quebec City, every single day on at least two or three stations. And it dawned on me one day-- when I was having a bored moment-- that these two jobs are the same, just different. And when I’m in front of a lecture hall or I’m behind a microphone, I’m explaining economics and I’m trying to whittle out the topics that they really don’t need and don’t need to know.

And that doesn’t-- now, that is the same whether you’re a first-year undergrad or a person in their car listening to a talk radio station. They don’t care that a cost curve is U-shaped. And why? Why would they? They want to know how does this affect me? I have a wife, I have two kids, I have a mortgage, and I feel like I’m getting poorer as my salary goes up. Why is that?

So the second part of the answer is-- again, strictly vanity on my part-- I’m trying to take-- and I use this term in very small letters-- I’m trying to take this little bit of media celebrity and move it into the lecture hall and move the lecture hall onto the media and try to do the same thing. Try to figure out the overarching question: why should I care? How does this affect me, my family, and my wallet? And because I teach macro, those are the topics that I can really drill down deep. It’s harder with micro when you’re doing marginal utility theory, and some things you just have to teach. But with macro, it’s wonderful because inflation, unemployment-- it’s not really hard to convince students that unemployment matters because most of them are.

So I like the literacy approach, and I like having a-- because I always knew it was a good approach, but I never knew what it was called and that it had some philosophical and peer-reviewed basis that now I can say-- when people say “You don’t teach enough topics,” I go, “I teach more than enough topics. Here, you want to read this paper on it?” And so I’m just living this really weird dual life of Dr. Kam by day and Eric on the radio by afternoon, but I never understood until recently. And that’s part of why I’m here to talk about it-- is how I’m doing the exact same thing, just to two very different audiences.

Wolla: That’s really great. In fact, it’s really intriguing to think about being both a radio host and an educator. How does that inform the topics? You addressed this a little bit, but is it a call-in show? Do you get feedback?

Kam: Yeah, sometimes, yes. It depends on the show. A lot of them are call-in shows, and I love those because you never know what’s coming. And that’s like being in a lecture hall too. But most of them-- three-quarters of them are just me and a host. And the host has preset questions. I don’t ask them; I don’t want them.

All I want is, can you just-- I ask the producers to email me what topics do you want to talk about? And that may even right there be a bit of an answer to your question. I mean, I get up in the morning at 5:30, and I make lunch for my son and my wife, and then I read the news, and I read the economics news.

And then I’m, in a sense, focused into what topics we’re going to talk about. I know what we have to get done because, again, I have an obligation. At the end of the day, I’m paid to get these students from first year to second year, and I will never-- I can’t shirk on that. So that has to stay. But, you know, that’s a big bubble. And I’m allowed to choose from within the bubble what topics that I really dig down deep, and what guides it is the world. So whether it’s unemployment, inflation, hyperinflation, stagflation, the different levels of unemployment, you know, I try to address what’s in the news because inevitably that’s what people on the radio; that’s what’s hitting them in their life.

And that’s-- and to the students too. I mean, the number one question I get from students now, sadly, is am I going to be as well off as my parents? We didn’t question this for decades. I knew I’d be better off than my parents. They knew they’d be better off than their parents. And now I have to say to students that I live in a city where the average house is 11 times the average salary in terms of price. No, you’re probably not going to be as well off as your parents, but it’s not your fault. It’s my generation’s fault, and the generation before that, and really bad government planning. And, of course, then we go into the government planning, monetary policy, fiscal policy. Where did they do right, where did they do wrong, and how did we get here? And so I really use the news to guide the topics that surround the absolute core of what I just have to teach.

Wolla: Yeah, talk about relevance. So what advice would you give to an instructor that was suddenly assigned a very large class for the first time?

Kam: As much as this is going to sound like it’s counterintuitive, listen a lot and talk a little. Try to talk to your students, try to get to know them a little bit and find out what drives them and what are the topics that interest them. If you go in thinking that you know your audience, you’ve already lost your audience because in a sense, you’re dealing with a bunch of 20-somethings and you’re probably-- well, at best 30=something, probably 40-something, 50-something.

And it doesn’t just-- everyone’s taught a class of 20 or 25, and they think, well, I can just blow that up by a factor of 20. You can’t. It’s so much different. The intimacy of 25 students-- where you’re going to know their names, and you’re going to almost get to know them by accident-- it doesn’t transfer to a large lecture hall. Take time and use every tool you have, whether it’s-- so like I get on social media and I tell my students, “Add me to Twitter,” “Add me to Facebook.” Not everybody’s comfortable with these things. I am. I try to figure out who are these kids? Where do they come from? What are their backgrounds?

I ask them all, “Where’d you go to high school?” And-- to try to figure out what part of the city are they from. Are they religious? Are they not religious? Do they live in residence? Do they live at home?

The best advice I can give is to go slow. Assume you know nothing about these students because you probably don’t. And talk to them and listen to them. In their own way, they’ll tell you what they want to know. They’ll tell you what they want to learn and what they need to learn. They’ll tell you if they’re there because they want to or they had to. And all of these things can help you broker a better course for your audience because at the end of the day-- you know, I joke that I lecture for me. I lecture because I love-- other than being with my two children, there is nothing that makes me feel more alive than being on a lecture hall.

But it’s a waste of time and effort if I’m not being heard. So the first thing I try to do is get to know the students the best I can. There are limits. You don’t want to hang out with them. I don’t want to go for drinks with them. Although it’s funny because I’m offered every now and then and I say thank you, but you don’t need me hanging around. But figure out who they are to the best of your ability so that you’re speaking to them and not at them.

Wolla: This is really been a great conversation. Do you have any last words of advice for your fellow economic educators who listen to this program?

Kam: Yeah, I do. I guess now-- somehow, I’ve been in this game for 26 years, and that makes me want to cry because I feel like I’m 26 years old. But I would say, number one, don’t be afraid. I see so many people that I talk to that get asked, “Do you want to try teaching first year?” And they’re afraid.

They’re flat out afraid. I don’t want to stand up in front of 300, 400, 500 people. And I guess-- you know what? I only have one: don’t be afraid. Try to be fearless once and especially once you have tenure, step out of your comfort zone. It will make you a much better teacher. I am so much better today because someone tapped me on the shoulder a long time ago and said, “We have nobody else who’s able, physically, without losing their lunch, to stand up in front of a group of 900 students. Would you give it a try?” And I was looking back because they don’t know it, but I videotaped myself doing it. I was brutal. I spoke to the ceiling, I spoke to my shoes, and I also thought I was at a comedy club, and I didn’t teach enough. I thought if they find me funny, they’ll like me. There’s limits to that too.

They still are in class, and they want to learn. But yeah, I would tell colleagues all over the world, if you’re listening to me, try it. You never know. And to use our terminology, for my career, the marginal benefit has so grossly exceeded the marginal cost that it’s immeasurable.

Wolla: Eric, thank you very much for being with us today. And thank you for what you do for your students and for other economic educators. It’s been a pleasure.

Kam: Thank you very much for the invitation.

Wolla (VO): I hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Professor Eric Kam. If you like this show, please subscribe anywhere you get podcasts, and be sure to tell your friends. Also, leave us a review, each one really helps. I’m Scott Wolla, and from the St. Louis Fed, you’ve been listening to Teach Economics.