My Philosophy of Teaching
Teachers teach; students study. As a teacher, I carry with me the influence and models of the teachers I have had. Their passion for learning and for the subjects of their teaching inspired my own passion for teaching and learning. As a teacher, I am myself, first, a student, engaged in the process of discovery, the effort to see connections between new knowledge and the totality of what I have learned, the struggle to recognize its implications for my life and the lives of my students. My goal is to ignite in my students a similar passion.
Some students see no purpose in coming to class. They feel they can learn the materials by studying the textbooks and reading online notes and materials. But there is more to teaching than just an exchange of ideas. A teacher serves as mediator between student and information and ideas. While students can learn without a teacher, they learn better with one.
As a teacher, I recognize that, if students are to study, they must be taught how to study. I bear a responsibility to provide them models and strategies for effective studying, to analyze what they are doing and why, show them a better way, and motivate them to take it. My responsibility in motivating them includes appealing to their sense of professionalism, their pride in their own self-worth and achievement, their desire to be successful, and even their fear of failure.
If I am to teach effectively, if they are to study effectively, I must show them why what I am teaching matters. In the end, if I am successful, if I have truly taught them, their study continues long after they have left my classroom. In the end, my goal is not their achievement, but their lifelong struggle to achieve, to go beyond their seeming boundaries, to grow and change and join the society of learners among whom I count myself a member.
If I were to speak to students on the importance of school, my message would be very similar to this speech delivered by President Barack Obama to high school students on September 8, 2009. (There is no intent to endorse a political view. The speech is valuable for its content, not as a consequence of the speaker).
Learning by Doing
Learning by doing is one of the best ways to learn, but people often forget that it can be both painful and frustrating. Students may sometimes feel like they are being "punished" (like Helen Keller) or just given "busy work" (like Daniel LaRusso) until their eyes are opened, and they realize what they have been learning.
Quotations and References
"You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes, all you can do is drown it."
-- Bill Stifler
(Think Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller)
"To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be."
-- Ayn Rand, The Art of Fiction
"In the Laboratory With Agassiz"
by Samuel H. Scudder
Much of my approach to teaching involves students observing lesson materials and thinking through the implications, relevance, significance, importance, or value to be drawn from the materials. Whether this is called the scientific method, induction, close reading, diagnostics, or one of several other labels, the approach is the same.
The Importance of "Stupidity"
Martin A. Schwartz explains the "Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research" by arguing that people should accept that they don't know the answer to something so that they can work to figure it out.
I think many students assume teachers have all the answers, and that, as students, they cannot do well unless they can find the answers written out for them to give back to the instructor. But the whole point of education is learning how to learn, learning how to figure things out, rooting out the raw materials that we then use to build and create the answers that do not yet exist, sometimes because no one else has ever thought to look.
Schwartz argues that "if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying," not because we haven't done our homework or read the materials, but because the answers we are looking for are not obvious and can only be found with effort. He concludes, "The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."
And, I would add, there is a joy in discovery, a sense of pleasure and accomplishment that comes when the impossible question has yielded, through our efforts, the possible answer. Some years ago, I illustrated the process with this graphic.