View Bus Tours Photos Here (Link)
Philosophy of Teaching
As a biology teacher, I hope to spark a sense of awe and wonder in my students as they gain an appreciation for the complex processes necessary to maintain life. While our understanding of the natural world has increased exponentially over the past decades, far more is waiting to be elucidated. Asking questions lies at the foundation of the scientific method and, wonderfully, each answer gained inevitably leads to more questions. While I teach many facts, I want my students to leave my class with more questions than answers, setting them up for a rich future as a lifelong learner.
What is your message to fellow educators?
As teachers, we spend hours planning lessons to ensure our students learn the subject specific content mandated by state standards. I teach biology and am endlessly fascinated and amazed by the natural world. I understand, however, that most of my students don’t share my innate love of biology and likely will not become doctors or scientists. In fact, within a few years (maybe even months) of leaving my classroom, students will likely not remember much about signal transduction pathways or the role of the Golgi apparatus in protein transport. I am a perfect example of the fleeting nature of some aspects of education. Although I took calculus (and did fairly well in the class) I couldn’t now calculate an integral to save my life. In fact, I really can’t tell you anything about integrals except that they exist. What does this say about our efforts as teachers? Is what we do a waste of time? Of course not. As teachers, we understand that a lot of what we teach will be quickly forgotten and this reality is okay. Although I devoutly adhere to my assigned content standards and teach many specific facts, I have developed some broader teaching goals that I believe will have lasting power.
First, I want to instill in students a wonder for the natural world. My second goal is closely related. I want students to learn to think like scientists. I hope students leave my classroom filled with curiosity, asking questions about the world around them and, equally important, I strive to give them the skills necessary to evaluate possible answers to these questions. The core scientific skills of supporting claims with evidence, reading graphs, and evaluating causal relationships are valuable throughout life and can be applied to many situations. Years ago I made a shift in my thinking. Instead of viewing mastery of content as my end goal, I now strive to use my content as a vehicle to teach thinking skills. I believe it benefits all of us to ask ourselves, "What is the 20 year goal for this lesson? What vital life skill am I teaching?" Today we literally carry in our pockets an unfathomably vast library of facts. Finding information is easy. What cannot be Googled, however, is the ability to reason, debate, communicate, evaluate sources, or weigh evidence. These skills have staying power throughout life and can be woven into lessons in any content area. We can all use our subject matter to forward the cognitive development of our students, setting them up to become lifelong learners with critical thinking skills. This, I believe, is the true power of education.
