Teaching Philosophy
In terms of developing a teaching philosophy I have the advantage of a wealth of classroom experience. I remember, however, looking over resumes when a position would open up at the schools where I taught and hesitating at the applicants with a long history of teaching. The fear was that these candidates would be set in their ways and would be either unwilling or unable to adapt to new methods of instruction. But after eighteen years in the field and now several years away from the classroom, I have come to learn something about myself as a teacher and an artist.
As a songwriter, I never want to write the same song twice. I borrow and steal from my peers, trying to take their successes and weave them into my own voice and style. I revisit old songs and try to work them into something more compelling. I let go of things that don’t work. I workshop ideas in front of audiences, I record myself to listen back, and I share my nascent work with people I respect and admire. I am always excited about sitting down with my guitar, even if the challenge is to write a song with two simple chords. And of course each performance of a song feels different depending on the room, the audience, what is happening emotionally that day with me, or with the folks around me. All of these explorations of song inform the way that I write and perform.
I think of teaching much the same way as I think about my career as a musician because teaching is about being both an artist and a performer. You have to look at what others have done and learn about what works and what doesn’t. In the case of instruction, I love two kinds of research in particular. During the last five or six years in the classroom the Next Generation Science Standards were being written and published. I love the fact that these standards came from well respected scientific organizations and were based on research in the field of science education. Looking at large scale academic studies on what works and doesn’t work in terms of curriculum design impacting actual student outcomes is a great place to start developing a pedagogical practice. Secondly I love professional learning groups (or communities as they are sometimes called.) At the core of these small, school or district based groups is the idea that the practitioners of instruction are the folks best equipped to come up with solutions to specific challenges that their students are facing in the classroom. These small groups identify challenges based on pieces of evidence which could be student work, test results, the results of a classroom observation, but are always focused on students. Then these groups come up with possible solutions and then test their ideas. Putting the power of instructional design into the hands of classroom teachers who are working as a team instead of individual teachers is a brilliant way to address challenges in education.
This constant cycle of collecting information and then trying out new ideas is what kept me in the classroom for so long. It is a creative outlet like no other. Trying out new ideas, using both large scale and small scale research to inform instruction, is much like being a builder and performer of songs.
So to put it more succinctly, I believe that the focus of instruction should always be centered on student outcomes. What do you want your students to be able to do and how can you get them there? The answers are infinite, just as there are new faces coming through the doors of academic institutions every year. In the world of Chemistry we are very fortunate that there are so many ways that students can build their understanding of the subject. They can collect data in the lab and try to make sense of it. They can look at the data other scientists collected and try to make sense of how others came to the conclusions they did. While safety and proper technique should be taught with detail and specific instructions, students should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to building the concepts that explain experimental data. Meeting students where they are academically is also incredibly important. All new knowledge is built on the foundation of previous information, and it is our job as instructors to learn about our students and help to place new information into a context that they can grasp.
Lastly I’d like to say that I think the most important thing teachers do is that they care about their students. Teachers are emotionally invested in how their students feel as well as how well they learn. For many of my previous students who did not go on to study in a STEM field, I want them to remember that they felt seen, heard, appreciated and held to a high standard of academic integrity in my classroom.