I’m working on a new version. A few hints:

• readied for disaster
• speaking in tongues
• ode to students

Dear Student,

You may be wondering why I gave you the assignment to compose an email to me that included a little bit about yourself as well as a few key ingredients in the message. It might not seem as though this fits the focus or themes for the class. I owe you an explanation.

First, there’s a pragmatic reason. I want you to write better emails. Actually, we—all of your instructors—have been talking about this. It’s not like we’re talking about you all the time, but when the topic of emails comes up, this is something that we all agree on. You will get much better response if you are clear in your message. And, although it might seem obvious, it will really help if you create an email that is courteous and also includes things like your name and the class you’re in. 

So, I ask you to include some kind of salutation at the top—like the “Dear Student” I used here, or “Hi Adam!” or even just “Greetings!” or “Dr. Johnston” or any other such thing—followed by a line break. This is always a good warm-up to a message, I think. It’s like a polite knock on the door, and it makes it clear that you’re writing the right person.

I also asked you to close with a sign-off that includes your name—the one you actually like to be called, Bob or Betsy rather than Robert or Elizabeth. That serves a few purposes. It assures me that you hit “send” after having finished the email as you intended. More important, it’s a simple cue for what to call you in response or, more basically, reminding me who I’m talking to. I get a lot of emails and I won’t always recognize your address, especially if it’s something like “sweaterknitter4@hayoo.com” or whatever. Even when the email is based on your real name, I don’t always know. Also, it’s just nice. 

It might seem odd, but I open an email with the same kind of anticipation of someone coming to my door to say hello or ask a question, and I prep myself to greet you and “listen” to your email with the same attention I give someone coming to visit in person. If you were stopping by my physical office, you would knock on the door, say hello, get some kind of invitation to come in, and after a conversation, perhaps about something really exciting like vector addition or jazz chord progressions or how our eyes and brain determine color, you’d say “thanks” or “have a good day” or something just because that’s pretty normal and easy. And if you did something different, like just barge into the room and sit down and start talking and then leave abruptly, that would be weird. 

In the last few years, this has become more important to point out because we have all kinds of messaging systems on our phones, through social media, in various messaging and collaboration systems, etc. etc. It’s easy to lose track, especially when they’re all being used at the same time, maybe even on the same device. For your instructor who might be interacting with and trying to get to know hundreds of students, it could be important for you to help them out. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but it could be important for you to put your best foot forward when you’re interacting with someone who could be writing you a letter of reference at some point. 

All of this “advice” might give the wrong impression, though. The most important reason I ask you to write an email at the start of the term isn’t just to get you to compose a polite letter. I genuinely like to know who you are, what I can do to help, and how I can learn from you. 

I think the most important reason for the assignment is that I really like to know who you are. There’s a much longer story (or therapy session) I could write here, but basically I’ve evolved and realized that learning is about relationships. This might sound strange or absurd—I used to think that. It’s easy to imagine that if you need to learn physics, then I should just show and tell you about some physics, and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at this. I have analogies and stories and models and examples and demonstrations and I think they’re all really good. But I’ve figured out that this is only a part of teaching and learning. There’s something about teaching that is uniquely human, and I think it’s important to make that human connection. You’re more interesting than just a source of homework assignments with diagrams and equations. 

I always learn something really extraordinary in these mini introductions. You are a swimmer or you are afraid of physics or you play bass (the guitar, not the fish) or you know first aid or you don’t think there’s anything very interesting about yourself (which I find interesting though I’m guessing it’s not true but it’s okay because you hardly know me and why should you tell me the really interesting bits?) or you have a dog or you like to play cribbage or so many other things. Or you just read Grapes of Wrath or you are halfway through knitting a scarf for the first time; or, one time, you woke up to look out your window to see the most incredible act of mercy from the neighbor across the street, helping the newspaper delivery kid get up after flipping his bike on the curb, and you were astonished because you always thought that guy was a conspiracy theory crazed hermit, but there he was with the bandaids while squatting on the wet grass in his robe and old sneakers in the gray of dusk. I love that story. And often you tell me something about yourself that hits me in a new way that I didn’t see coming, and maybe neither did you because it was just simply something about you and you’ve taken it for granted that that’s a very rare person. And sometimes later I ask you about cribbage or bass (the guitar or the fish) or hiking trails or music, sometimes in between analyzing some collection of forces. I enjoy this part of my job, and you’re a critical component in this. 

So, anyway, I’m happy to get your emails. I wanted you to know what my email address is and I wanted you to try it out. Feel free to write me again. Just please, please, for the love of all things beautiful: Sign your name. 

Sincerely,

Adam

I really believe that there’s an inherent value in thinking through a teaching philosophy and using it to give courses a foundation.  On the other hand, it’s clear to me that a lot of teaching philosophies run the risk of simply being a string of nice words.  I’ve read many other teaching philosophies that have great sentiment, but generally not much that’s original.  Students should construct their own knowledge.  Teaching materials should be engaging.   Assessments should be appropriate for the course being taught.  The classroom should be student centered.  This is all good – and correct¹ – but it also falls short for me.  

At least once a year I have my students in science education courses take a teaching philosophy inventory in which they get to reveal to themselves how their own thinking about teaching and education lumps them together with other teachers, philosophers, and trends.  It’s revealing, both to me and to them, and it’s exciting to see one’s own thinking being paired with John Dewey or Paulo Freire.  (It’s a bit more frightening to me, personally, when students’ thinking ties with E. D. Hirsch and other “cultural literacy” ideals, but still helpful for us all to see that their developing ideas do link to a more coherent set of philosophical concepts.)  Moreover, they get to see their ideas aligning with different views of what learning means, what knowledge is, and what education is good for.  Each year I take the same inventory of my teaching philosophy, and it has always stood firmly on the side of being student centered and directed at an existential view of learning for the growth of an individual.  Yet, over the years I’ve seen it shift gradually from focusing on the individual exclusively to an aim towards societal change.  I think that, especially in science education and teacher preparation, I see myself not simply helping students to understand themselves and their place in this world.  I am pushing to shape the world in which we live.  So, add to the above list of clichés one more: Teaching is a political act.  As a favorite poet, Taylor Mali, states, “if I ever change the world it’s going to be one eighth grader at a time.”  I don’t get to teach middle school students too often, but I do get to teach their teachers, and I take seriously that responsibility.

All that said, my actual model in the classroom comes down to a couple of things that I think are neglected in the standard “students should construct their own knowledge in a minds-on student centered classroom” teaching philosophy.  These specific pieces are still consistent with the SSCTOKIAMOSCC philosophy, but a bit more useful to me, personally.  They derive both from my own classroom experiences and my research: 

• Learning requires big mistakes, horrendous errors, and terrific blunders.  This would seem like a counterproductive teaching strategy at first glance.  Yet, it’s clear to me that the students who do not get to see where they’re misunderstanding something do little to make strides in their learning.  Conceptual change theory, a basis for much of my own research, looks at learning not so much as a simple accumulation of new ideas, but the replacing of previous ideas with new ones.  For this to happen, the learner needs to realize what the prior conception is in the first place, see its weakness, and then realize the fruitfulness of the new idea.  Physics is ripe with examples of this being useful.  Being able to state Newton’s first law and being able to make a prediction of the motion of an object are two very different understandings.  Many, many students can state Newton’s laws but still use more intuitive reasonings about motion when they actually do the physics.  Making mistakes, recognizing them, compiling them, and realizing the reasoning behind them is really necessary.  I try to scaffold my classes so that students are free to make lots of mistakes and conceptual blunders on pre-tests, early responses papers, and homework.  This works beyond just the general physics curricula and extends particularly well to when students are trying to understand the nature of science itself or the nature of science learning.  Eliciting early ideas in discussion and writings makes these ideas clear from the outset and gives the student a chance to realize a change in conception, rather than just recite something new but still hold on to a preexisting idea.
• An instructor (me) needs to make explicit the “hidden” curriculum.  It’s funny to admit that there is such a thing as a hidden (versus explicit) curriculum, but in my own research about students understanding the nature of science and in the research and presentations I’ve done with Eric Amsel, we’ve found that much of education is not just learning new stuff, but trying to first figure out what stuff it is that needs to be learned.  A nice example of this is in typical general education coursework.  While we may emphasize to students the understanding of conservation of energy or the inverse square law, many of us will state and believe that the overall objective of such coursework is to enable students to be critical consumers of science and informed members of a democratic society.  So, we need to admit that there’s a bit of a chasm here: How does a student come to learn these grand abstractions while focusing so intently on how a rate of heat transfer is proportional to a temperature gradient in a solid?  The student needs to see the connection, and the instructor needs to show this explicitly.  I must make it clear to students exactly what kind of learning I want them to achieve.  If I want my students to be critical thinkers in a scientific context, then I should push towards this in the class itself.  Doing this requires assessments of students that explicitly reveal my goals, such as having students completing research projects and analysis papers.  It is my responsibility to the students in my class to not only challenge them, but to challenge them in very specific ways so that they actually see (and realize) the same goals in a course that I do.  This is much easier said than done, but something that I’m always trying to improve upon.

The nature of these ideals is such that my instruction is generally very patient and tolerant of wrong answers and misconceptions.  While I know where I want to push students, I also really love the learning process(es), both in myself and in my students.  I don’t think it’s easy and, in fact, I am dubious when it seems to be so for students (or myself).  And, the beauty of being a researcher in science education is that when students do not understand something – perhaps even developing strong misconceptions – my perspective as a teacher changes from wanting to treat this to wanting to understand the source of the misconception.  It’s an exciting, guilty pleasure of mine.  I’m certain that the learning of anything really worthwhile is very slow, and might not even happen completely within the time constraints of a semester.  That makes what I do in the classroom that much more important – it needs to be an enrichment that reaches beyond the confines of Lind Lecture Hall or any given fall or spring.

Finally, behind all of the strategies and philosophies of teaching that I’m trying to tease out is one very simple concept: Teaching is fun².  “Fun,” actually, doesn’t even begin to describe it.  It is an essential part of me, and there is perhaps no other version of myself that I like better than when I’m in the teaching environment.  Any philosophy and research ideal of mine may change, but the success I could have as a teacher hinges entirely on the selfish joy I get to experience as a teacher.

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1. See: Johnston, A. (2008). Demythologizing or dehumanizing? A response to Settlage and the ideals of open inquiry. Journal of Science Teacher Education. 19(1), 11-13

2. This was the general sentiment of a keynote address I gave a few years ago, “The Joy of Teaching”.