Teaching
Syllabi
| biol_238_-_microbiology__-_spring_semester_2019_-_kenyon_college.pdf |
| biol_191_-_not_just_darwin_syllabus_fall_semester_2018_kenyon_college.pdf |
Teaching Philosophy
My foremost goal as an instructor is to help students engage with a subject both intellectually and emotionally. Whereas the former entails a probing interrogation of material, especially with ideas and concepts, that leads to genuine and deep understanding, the latter involves development of curiosity and enthusiasm for the subject. In the end, we really learn what we direly need to or, because of genuine curiosity, we really want to. Emotional engagement is key to kindling and sustaining that all important curiosity. The two modes of engagement thus act synergistically, each driving the other in a virtuous cycle that turns students into active scholars who take joy in what they have learned, regale their friends and family with their new knowledge, and are eager and able to learn more on their own. I have developed this engagement focused, student-centered teaching philosophy from a mix of the lessons I learned from the teachers I had a student (both good and bad), experts whom I have encountered in the BEACON Center for Evolution in Action, and ongoing trial and error while teaching as a mentor and during my time as a visiting assistant professor at Kenyon College. The following are its core principles and characteristics.
Relationship: I seek to form positive relationships with students in which they know that I have respect, trust, and belief in them, and that I see them as equal human beings first. I want to challenge students to take risks and think boldly, and a positive relationship allows me to do that while reducing the potential for an adversarial dynamic.
Humility: Engagement requires humility that allows one to view mistakes as okay, and ignorance and confusion as opportunities for knowledge and new learning. I do my best to model this attitude as an instructor, in part by being honest about when I struggle with concepts.
Humor: I am performative and playful in my teaching, incorporating humor and never shying away from pointing out the absurd and ridiculous, engaging in wordplay, and including running gags. Making class fun helps maintain student attention while encouraging the enthusiasm I want them to feel.
Storytelling: I develop my courses as narratives. I build ideas, themes, and concepts upon each other logically and compellingly as in a story. This structure ensures clarity and logical flow and emphasizes the relationships between ideas and concepts, while making space for piquant surprises and revelations. Within the broader sweep of the course’s story, individual sessions and lectures act as smaller, coherent narrative episodes. By the end, the goal is for students to have an integrated conceptual understanding of a subject as a whole that provides satisfaction but ongoing curiosity, just like a good story.
Focus on Evolution: Evolution is the theoretical heart of biology precisely because it makes the obtuse explicable. Harnessing its explanatory power is critical to helping students understand the deep connections between biological phenomena and see biology as an integrated whole. My approach to teaching any subject thus focuses on using evolution as a central, organizing concept and theme.
Emphasis on Ideas and Connections: I focus on broad ideas, unifying concepts, and interconnections between phenomena, as they serve to excite students and give them new ways of viewing the world. In microbiology, for instance, I emphasize the role of the microbiome in human life, how microbiology has affected all aspects of human life, and how metabolism is at the heart of it all. I want students to grasp and play with these ideas, which are more likely to stay with them than disconnected details and facts that they will memorize for a test and then promptly forget.
Historical Orientation: A subject’s history makes it comprehensible by emphasizing how we came to know what we do. A historical focus also allows me to emphasize the provisional nature of scientific knowledge and organically incorporate lessons on the nature, practice, and philosophy of science. Moreover, it gives me a framework within which to integrate vignettes about particular scientists, which provides color, amusement, and even pathos, while foregrounding science as a human activity and allowing me to showcase figures from underrepresented groups in ways that students find engaging.
Class Format: I combine lecturing with student-driven components centered on what I call “question cards”. I have students fill out notecards on which they jot down questions or insights provoked by either the reading or the lecture, and then turn them in. These cards provide me with a means of getting students to think more deeply about material in a way that is guided by their own curiosity, while allowing students who are shy or have issues with social anxiety to ask questions without fear. They generate a lot of fun and intriguing questions that constitute a flexible resource. I typically devote part of the lecture time to answering questions from the cards. They also provide nuclei for discussions. In lab courses, by contrast, lecture is a small part of class. I orient those courses around inquiry, but I still use short introductory lectures to provide context and set a narrative structure. I am considering trying a more “flipped” structure, too, in which I would record lectures for students to go over outside of class, and then have class be focused on discussions of ideas and concepts.
Collaboration with Students: I see my courses as collaborations between me and my students, both in terms of content and, to some degree, structure. This collaboration helps enrich the experience for students, provide them a sense of ownership, and ensure that they get from class what they need.
Assessments: When possible, my preference is for assessing student performance using take-home exams for which students have a week or more to complete. I see and structure the exams less as standard assessments than as almost dialectical learning opportunities. My questions can be esoteric at times, but they are aimed getting students to think about, absorb, and play with concepts. For instance, I have asked students to spend 15 minutes or so sitting outside in a natural area and reflecting on the meaning of the tree of life and the connections of every living thing, themselves included, and then to describe their thoughts and conclusions. In other cases, I have asked students to think about a concept, figure out how to explain it, then attempt to teach it to a friend or relative, and to then report on what they said, where the person to whom they spoke had problems, and their thoughts at the end. When a returned assignment suggests that a student has not grasped an idea, I have them either attempt to address that idea again with further guidance or to speak with me so that we can clear up confusion and advance their understanding. I think that this approach is better than using traditional timed tests that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate material, both because the material is soon then forgotten and because grasp of ideas does not necessarily covary with test-taking ability. In each class in which I have used this model, students have responded well, told me that they had learned a lot from them, even noting that they looked forward to these “exams”. Moreover, one of my best students told me that my approach to exams boosted her confidence, as she tended to do poorly on traditional exams, which had caused her significant self-doubt. This approach, of course, is difficult to use in large classes, in which case I use a hybrid model of traditional exams and shorter take-home assignments.
I have had success with courses based in this overall approach. Students have responded very well, and have became more enthusiastic and curious about the material over time. I found that the focus on positive relationship and probing questions allows them to push boundaries and sometimes make some astonishing connections. A number of students told me that my courses changed how they viewed the world, as well as their career plans. I still hear from past students as they find papers or ideas that they want to share or discuss, suggesting that they continue to learn from the course, long after it "ended".
My foremost goal as an instructor is to help students engage with a subject both intellectually and emotionally. Whereas the former entails a probing interrogation of material, especially with ideas and concepts, that leads to genuine and deep understanding, the latter involves development of curiosity and enthusiasm for the subject. In the end, we really learn what we direly need to or, because of genuine curiosity, we really want to. Emotional engagement is key to kindling and sustaining that all important curiosity. The two modes of engagement thus act synergistically, each driving the other in a virtuous cycle that turns students into active scholars who take joy in what they have learned, regale their friends and family with their new knowledge, and are eager and able to learn more on their own. I have developed this engagement focused, student-centered teaching philosophy from a mix of the lessons I learned from the teachers I had a student (both good and bad), experts whom I have encountered in the BEACON Center for Evolution in Action, and ongoing trial and error while teaching as a mentor and during my time as a visiting assistant professor at Kenyon College. The following are its core principles and characteristics.
Relationship: I seek to form positive relationships with students in which they know that I have respect, trust, and belief in them, and that I see them as equal human beings first. I want to challenge students to take risks and think boldly, and a positive relationship allows me to do that while reducing the potential for an adversarial dynamic.
Humility: Engagement requires humility that allows one to view mistakes as okay, and ignorance and confusion as opportunities for knowledge and new learning. I do my best to model this attitude as an instructor, in part by being honest about when I struggle with concepts.
Humor: I am performative and playful in my teaching, incorporating humor and never shying away from pointing out the absurd and ridiculous, engaging in wordplay, and including running gags. Making class fun helps maintain student attention while encouraging the enthusiasm I want them to feel.
Storytelling: I develop my courses as narratives. I build ideas, themes, and concepts upon each other logically and compellingly as in a story. This structure ensures clarity and logical flow and emphasizes the relationships between ideas and concepts, while making space for piquant surprises and revelations. Within the broader sweep of the course’s story, individual sessions and lectures act as smaller, coherent narrative episodes. By the end, the goal is for students to have an integrated conceptual understanding of a subject as a whole that provides satisfaction but ongoing curiosity, just like a good story.
Focus on Evolution: Evolution is the theoretical heart of biology precisely because it makes the obtuse explicable. Harnessing its explanatory power is critical to helping students understand the deep connections between biological phenomena and see biology as an integrated whole. My approach to teaching any subject thus focuses on using evolution as a central, organizing concept and theme.
Emphasis on Ideas and Connections: I focus on broad ideas, unifying concepts, and interconnections between phenomena, as they serve to excite students and give them new ways of viewing the world. In microbiology, for instance, I emphasize the role of the microbiome in human life, how microbiology has affected all aspects of human life, and how metabolism is at the heart of it all. I want students to grasp and play with these ideas, which are more likely to stay with them than disconnected details and facts that they will memorize for a test and then promptly forget.
Historical Orientation: A subject’s history makes it comprehensible by emphasizing how we came to know what we do. A historical focus also allows me to emphasize the provisional nature of scientific knowledge and organically incorporate lessons on the nature, practice, and philosophy of science. Moreover, it gives me a framework within which to integrate vignettes about particular scientists, which provides color, amusement, and even pathos, while foregrounding science as a human activity and allowing me to showcase figures from underrepresented groups in ways that students find engaging.
Class Format: I combine lecturing with student-driven components centered on what I call “question cards”. I have students fill out notecards on which they jot down questions or insights provoked by either the reading or the lecture, and then turn them in. These cards provide me with a means of getting students to think more deeply about material in a way that is guided by their own curiosity, while allowing students who are shy or have issues with social anxiety to ask questions without fear. They generate a lot of fun and intriguing questions that constitute a flexible resource. I typically devote part of the lecture time to answering questions from the cards. They also provide nuclei for discussions. In lab courses, by contrast, lecture is a small part of class. I orient those courses around inquiry, but I still use short introductory lectures to provide context and set a narrative structure. I am considering trying a more “flipped” structure, too, in which I would record lectures for students to go over outside of class, and then have class be focused on discussions of ideas and concepts.
Collaboration with Students: I see my courses as collaborations between me and my students, both in terms of content and, to some degree, structure. This collaboration helps enrich the experience for students, provide them a sense of ownership, and ensure that they get from class what they need.
Assessments: When possible, my preference is for assessing student performance using take-home exams for which students have a week or more to complete. I see and structure the exams less as standard assessments than as almost dialectical learning opportunities. My questions can be esoteric at times, but they are aimed getting students to think about, absorb, and play with concepts. For instance, I have asked students to spend 15 minutes or so sitting outside in a natural area and reflecting on the meaning of the tree of life and the connections of every living thing, themselves included, and then to describe their thoughts and conclusions. In other cases, I have asked students to think about a concept, figure out how to explain it, then attempt to teach it to a friend or relative, and to then report on what they said, where the person to whom they spoke had problems, and their thoughts at the end. When a returned assignment suggests that a student has not grasped an idea, I have them either attempt to address that idea again with further guidance or to speak with me so that we can clear up confusion and advance their understanding. I think that this approach is better than using traditional timed tests that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate material, both because the material is soon then forgotten and because grasp of ideas does not necessarily covary with test-taking ability. In each class in which I have used this model, students have responded well, told me that they had learned a lot from them, even noting that they looked forward to these “exams”. Moreover, one of my best students told me that my approach to exams boosted her confidence, as she tended to do poorly on traditional exams, which had caused her significant self-doubt. This approach, of course, is difficult to use in large classes, in which case I use a hybrid model of traditional exams and shorter take-home assignments.
I have had success with courses based in this overall approach. Students have responded very well, and have became more enthusiastic and curious about the material over time. I found that the focus on positive relationship and probing questions allows them to push boundaries and sometimes make some astonishing connections. A number of students told me that my courses changed how they viewed the world, as well as their career plans. I still hear from past students as they find papers or ideas that they want to share or discuss, suggesting that they continue to learn from the course, long after it "ended".