Reflection
My first
experience with teaching felt a little bit like being thrown into cold
water. I had experienced many great
teachers, having attending a small liberal arts college called Bard, but I had
little idea how to go about doing it myself.
When I found myself as a teaching assistant for the introductory biology
course at the University of Florida,
where I did my masters work, I felt a strong need for guidance. The course was an in-depth and detailed
survey of biological diversity, teaching particulars of anatomy, taxonomy, and
general biology to would-be doctors and veterinarians. I had received broad training in the material
at Bard, but I had not had experience in some of the course material
before. Thus, I attended several lab sections
from other TA’s in order to experience different teaching perspectives and
ideas. I wanted to know what exactly was
I supposed to be teaching the students? My experience as an observer was very
varied. Some TA’s were really dynamic,
focusing on larger themes to help students organize the material, while some
sat and read newspapers while the students in his section and I struggled with
the material. I realized that I would
not flourish as a teacher without more experience with both the course material
and with teaching. Without formal
training, I wasn’t sure how to pick out specific elements that made certain
teachers good. However, this first
experience started me on a journey toward figuring out what makes a good
teacher. My subsequent experiences with
teaching, mentorship, and training in pedagogical techniques have all helped me
to better understand some elements of good teaching.
I have
always valued sharing my passions with other people. This drove me to find more opportunities to
teach. While working on my Masters in Monteverde, Costa Rica, I did a couple of demonstrations at
local schools, showing students butterflies I was rearing, and explaining a bit
about their biology (and about insect biology in general). My passion for the material helped me feel
more comfortable with teaching—even though I still had no formal training in
effective teaching, I learned that passion can excite people to question and
see the world around them in a different way.
When I came
to Duke University
for Ph.D. work, I attended a week-long teacher training prior to my first
semester. This training opened my eyes
to pedagogical theory—I realized just how much some people thought about and
worked on being good teachers. I had a
great time with the intensive discussions, readings, and activities. Earlier, I had thought that people tended to
learn more from discussions and first-hand experience with material than
through lectures (at least, non-interactive ones), but it was nice to formally
confirm this, and to thoroughly discuss alternatives—ways to make learning more
interactive. In addition, I became more
determined to teach by asking students questions, rather than by giving them
answers (to help them think about the context, and potentially help guide them
towards figuring out the answer for themselves). I finished feeling much more confident about
teaching in general. I still felt like I
wanted more training in teaching, so I took the seminar in teaching (before it
formally became a course), which helped my thinking about teaching
considerably. In addition to training
teaching methods, the seminar gave me the opportunity to interact with some
faculty at nearby, smaller universities.
Here, I met Lisa Carloye, a professor at Elon University. Because I was excited her teaching ideas, I
decided to pursue a mentorship with her.
Through my
mentorship with Lisa, I had my first opportunity to give a formal lecture to a
class, introducing the vertebrate nervous system. In addition, I learned in-depth about
interactive learning, when Lisa and I received a Duke University Graduate
Student Teaching Mini-grant to design and teach an intensive course on Insect
Biology at Elon
University during January term,
2003. We used the case-study method as a
way of helping students to understand the material, with no more than one
lecture during the course. We
co-designed the course syllabus, topics, and major projects, including team
rearing of insects, where each team was responsible for learning about and
periodically presenting information to the class about physiology, behavior,
and ecology of the insects they reared.
In addition, the two case studies I designed with input and help from
Lisa, and implemented during the course (one using mutualisms involving ants to
teach about mutualisms and their ubiquity, and one using gypsy moths to teach
students about complexities of insect population biology) helped me to better
understand different ways to run class activities, and to help students get
first-hand experience with course material (e.g., by rearing insects).
At Duke, I
have learned so much from watching and working with professors teaching
courses, including Alec Motten, Will Wilson, and Bill
Morris. I have worked as a TA for
diverse courses here—sometimes teaching more familiar material (e.g., Ecology);
sometimes teaching relatively unfamiliar material (e.g. Physiology). Over the years, I took opportunities to
re-write course material for Ecology and for Organismal
Evolution. During the Spring
of 2003, I gave my first lecture (on insects) to a class of over 150
people. This, along with previous
experiences, helped to give me enough confidence to try teaching part time at Guilford
College, where I designed and
taught an introductory botany class to continuing education students. This was the most tremendous and trying
learning experience of my career thus far.
As a
teacher at Guilford, I learned
several things about teaching that I think I could only have learned by doing
it (and this highlights the importance of experiential learning!). First, I learned to be flexible, and try
different things to help students learn the material. I gave lectures during 2.5-hour periods, so I
made sure to not only take a 10-minute break in the middle, but also to take many
“breaks” throughout the lecture, in the form of questions I asked students,
giving them a few minutes each time to discuss potential answers with their
neighbors before presenting their answers to me, after which I presented my own
answers that incorporated student responses.
On quizzes and exams (covering lecture and lab material rather than the
book), I tried giving several different types of questions, including multiple
choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and short essay. Some of my students were better auditory
learners, and some were better visual learners, so eventually I tried reading
quiz questions aloud in addition to letting students read them on their
own. I also had students make a
plant/leaf collection for a quiz grade.
In labs, I carted several plants each week from the Duke greenhouse
teaching collection, so that students would be able to see for themselves a
diverse array of plants and plant adaptations that they might never see
otherwise, including plants from each of the major plant divisions, as well as
aquatic plants, carnivorous plants, tropical plants, desert plants, etc.
Second, I
set very high expectations of the students—perhaps too high,
given the level of education many of the students had had prior to this class
(several of them had had no previous science classes). Thus, I had to prioritize which of my high
expectations were most important—what were the fundamental things I wanted
students to leave having learned? I only
loosely adhered to my original policies regarding formatting of assignments and
the late-policies, in favor of making sure their assignments clearly
demonstrated that they understood the basics of the material, and that they
were able to process the information, going beyond just repeating information
I’d given them in class.
Third, I needed to really distill
the ideas I hoped to convey in the course.
I tried to very clearly transition between topics, stressing the form
and function of plants in a phylogenetic
context. I also stressed the scientific
method, that what they were learning was not just isolated facts. I found that this was extremely challenging
for me, especially at first, when I had to give two lectures covering several
different topics that would serve as background for future lectures. These lectures probably should have been
several lectures each. In addition, I
found that the book I had chosen did not seem to prioritize the information in
its chapters. Thus, I made my lectures
available on the web, along with all quizzes and assignments. Similarly, I ended up designing my own labs,
after finding that the lab manual I had ordered focused too much on minutia and
terminology, without helping students to fit the material into a larger framework. I hoped that in all aspects of the class, I
could help students to process the material rather than focus on memorizing
seemingly disconnected bits of information.
Fourth, I learned that the internet
is essential for being available to students, especially when teaching a class
on a campus an hour away from where I live.
Because I only made it to campus once a week (the day I taught class), I
made sure to do a few things to stay available, including checking email
frequently and answering student questions promptly, putting all lecture material,
assignments, etc. up on the web, and arriving early (or staying late) so I had
time to meet with students before (or after) class if they wanted. Normally, I hold office hours by appointment,
because students have very rarely come to regularly scheduled office hours I
have set up in the past. I also make it
clear to students that I am readily available to answer questions and set up
appointments by email.
I feel like
I have come full circle, course-wise. At
this point, I have taught a biodiversity course four times: once in Florida,
and three times at Duke (either 26A or 26B).
Not only do I now feel much more comfortable with the material in the
class than I did when I first taught in Gainesville, but I also feel like I
know more about my role as a teacher: how to convey material to students, how
to help keep students learning more actively, and how to help students put the
material into a conceptual framework. I
do feel much more comfortable with teaching now, working with students
one-on-one, in smaller lectures, labs and other inquiry-based activities, and
to a lesser degree with small group discussions and large lecture classes. I am still working to improve myself as a
teacher, to incorporate comments from student evaluations, to try new techniques,
and simply to gain more experience in the practice of teaching.