As a teacher, and as one who sometimes teaches other teachers, I hate to admit the fact that schools are often responsible for instilling a disdain for learning among even the best students. I work in a system that, all too often, gets so hung up on grade point averages and final exams that teachers and students alike miss the “COOL!” moments of learning. Like anyone who enjoys teaching and learning, I try very hard to avoid this trap. It is not easy.

Learning is multifaceted. Memorization of content knowledge is important, but so is developing an understanding of what that knowledge means and why. One can, after all, memorize and repeat a list of phrases from a foreign language without having any notion of what they’re saying. I want to help develop a biology student who can memorize ATP counts in the various phases of cellular respiration as well as anyone else but who can also answer a question like “Why do we eat food?” You’d be very surprised at the number of people with advanced degrees in biology, not to mention the number of high school graduates, who are unable to answer such a basic question.

On a practical level, I endeavor to act as an informed facilitator in my courses. I lecture, because it is a quick and easy way to convey a lot of information to students. But, I also try to lead discussions and encourage my students to ask questions. Tactile, visual and other experiences are important as well. In fact, I would place laboratory and group experiences on a level of importance far above lecture and note taking. It is during these times that the students get a chance to think about what they’ve read and what I’ve said or will say. They get to share their own insights with one another. Whenever possible and practical, I like to give up some of the power that my students see me as having. I try not to be the “know it all” all of the time. I like for the students to discover things on their own and realize that they actually understand something without having to get a test question marked as correct.

In addition to providing a variety of learning experiences, I also think a good teacher should be open to a wide variety of evaluation techniques. Learning is not only hard to define, it is hard to measure. By mixing traditional tests, projects, lab activities, library research and other types of assessments, I hope that I have a clearer picture of what my students know and what they can do when it comes time to assign a grade for their course work. I have to admit, though, that I think grades are kind of silly.

Decades after they’ve had my class, I want my students to be able to evaluate a scientific claim that they hear on the news. I want them to know where to find information and how to critically analyze it. My goal is to help produce a student who carries skills away from my class that enable him or her to seek out and understand new things without being forced to write them down in a notebook, memorize them and then take a test. I want the students to have the same wonderment and appreciation for learning that they had as a child. I also want them to understand that, throughout their lives, they have the incredible power to learn and understand on their own. A teacher can encourage, model, explain and influence. A teacher can not force one to learn.

I often get the chance to work with groups of science education graduate students. One, who had a bachelor’s degree in zoology, stands out in my mind. He was very articulate and he knew a lot of things. The day I met him, I was sure that he would be a great science teacher. I had no doubt that this student could have recited a brilliant definition of the term metamorphosis if I had asked him to do so. I was certain that he had already done that in his previous classes though. During the class I was helping to teach, this student and each of his classmates were assigned the task of “babysitting” a container filled with flour and mealworms. Mealworms, by the way, metamorphose into beetles. A couple of weeks after getting his container, my student came to class with a puzzled look. He showed us the container he had been looking at for days. Then he explained why he was so baffled, “Bugs keep falling into my mealworms.” He was encouraged to watch, to count, to record and to think. The next week he came back, carrying his container of mealworms and beetles, and he had a gleaming smile across his face. This time I knew he had it. He had it for himself and he had it for his future students. “This is so COOL!” he said.