Last week, based on a question from a brilliant and very dedicated new colleague, I shared good and bad advice you can give to your students about how to successfully learn in your classes. This week’s topic comes from a different, brilliant, and very dedicated new colleague. This second colleague asked what to do if you do not know the answer to a student’s question. I will offer a five-part approach. (Yes, I am one of the many law professors who love to number things.)

• Part 1. Don’t panic. You are not expected to know the answer to every student question. When I studied Andy Leipold of Illinois for What the Best Law Teachers Do, I learned that the opposite reaction is the ideal. Based on Professor Liepold’s example, I have learned to take and express delight in a question from a student for which I do not immediately know the answer. A student has cared enough and thought deeply enough about the course material to find an ambiguity or complexity; I try to take joy in the fact that a student is living up to my dream for my teaching: substantial student engagement. I therefore start by thanking the student for the question and smiling.

• Part 2. Acknowledge that you do not know the answer. I say something like, “Thank you, _________. I love being asked relevant questions for which I do not immediately know the answer.” I include the word relevant because, on occasion, a student’s question is actually off topic. (For those off-topic questions, I explain that my answer will get the class off topic so I will not answer it now, but I promise to gladly answer the question in office hours.)   

• Part 3. Tell the students you will speak aloud your initial impressions and analysis of the question and then do so. Explain that you are doing so because they will need to know how to respond to such questions. Your students will find your willingness to both acknowledge your uncertainty and to walk them through your thinking about the question to be an instructive act of role modeling.

• Part 4. Promise the students that you will look into the question further and get back to them.

• Part 5. Do the research and additional thinking and then close the loop in the next class session, by email, or by a posting to your course webpage and explain what you researched and what you have learned.