Category: Week 14 – Teaching for the 21st Century

I wrote this “Personal Statement” in January for an award nomination dossier.  I would have connected the dots for this class in a new statement but I feel this one does it best, for me.  Tools I’ve learned, and read about, in this class will enhance my skills at being the best teacher I can be.  Above all else, I promise to never stop learning how to be a better teacher.

I hated my high school math teachers.  One asked why I wanted to be an engineer instead of an actress (I loved Advanced Drama class).  The other said, “You’ll never be an engineer”.  Despite their violation of everything teachers should stand for I was certain I would become an engineer.  Thankfully Virginia Tech thought so, too, and granted me early acceptance into the engineering program.

While taking a full load of 18 credit hours per semester I spent my weekends as a ski instructor at a resort a couple of hours away.  Snow skiing was my sport and I was following a long line of instructors in my family.  We taught lessons while it snowed, while it rained, underneath snow blowers, when it was below zero.  The conditions didn’t matter because there was such joy in seeing someone who had never skied before or who lacked coordination “get it” and smile with pride at what they had accomplished with my help.

I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and was thrilled to address the first two graduation announcements to those math teachers who did not believe in me.  While working my first job after graduation I wanted to find something fun to do in my free time.  I became a math tutor at Sylvan Learning Center.  Two evenings a week, I would sit with students who struggled with math, who did not want to be hanging out with me talking about math.  The challenge did not matter because I found such joy in seeing them “get it” and smile with pride because they finally understood fractions.

My career progressed and I found myself working for a 3D CAD modeling software company.  Part of my job was giving demonstrations about how the software worked.  Sometimes I would be a consultant for a customer and go on-site to help them use the program to design their own products.  The drafters and engineers were not always happy about being told they had to use this new software.  It was not what they were used to and most adults do not like forced change.  It was a struggle to get through to them, sometimes, but it was worth it because I found such joy in seeing them “get it” and realize that their jobs would be easier because they had learned this new tool with my help.

I worked for nine years at an engineering and manufacturing company in roles of increasing responsibility.  It was an amazing learning opportunity because I got to work in different departments including design, quality, manufacturing, purchasing and eventually the continuous improvement group.  I travelled internationally and really learned how to be an engineer during my time there.  I was fortunate to spend about a year there as a facilitator in the continuous improvement group.  That role is part engineer, part motivator, part organizer and part teacher.  We would explain a lean manufacturing principle to co-workers then help them implement it into their department or work area during a Kaizen event.  Most of the time no one was interested in the task, usually because they did not understand that it would eventually benefit them.  I enjoyed the challenge of changing their minds, even if it took weeks of effort because there is such joy in seeing them eventually “get it” and embrace the process improvements we had implemented together.

There was a pattern emerging that everyone in my life, but me, was noticing.  I was a competent engineer, being promoted regularly.  I was pleased with my career but not fulfilled by it.  Friends and colleagues whom I had mentored (or tutored in calculus during lunch) started mentioning that I should be a teacher.  “But I’m an engineer,” I thought.  While I understood that I could change careers and be a high school math teacher, I would have to leave the world of engineering, the topic I loved and had studied, behind, which did not interest me.  So, I ignored their advice for a few more years.

A bizarre and wonderful chain of events led to a lunch with a friend and faculty member in my home department at VT.  During that lunch, I admitted that I felt I had reached a plateau in my engineering career; that strange place where you realize you do not want another promotion because of the added stress and drama it would create, but you also do not want to stay in the same job for twenty more years.  My faculty friend admitted he needed help teaching his class, that he was overwhelmed.  I, half-jokingly, said, “Hire me to help.”  It had never occurred to me that I could teach engineering.  He was very interested in pursuing the possibility that this could work.  Three months later, about fifteen minutes before I learned my company was going to close our facility and lay off all of its employees (including me), I received an email with a job posting at VT for a professor of practice in my home department of mechanical engineering.  I applied for and was hired to start two months later.

Although the pay was significantly less than my former job, I hoped the flexibility and satisfaction I would find in teaching would be worth it.  The first year we had 363 students.  There is no formal training for teaching at the college level so you learn quickly or give up.  Not accustomed to giving up, I jumped in the deep end asking questions, seeking advice, reading books on teaching, and listening to pod casts.  Eventually I learned many things about teaching, thanks to co-workers, and former teachers (not my high school math teachers).  By the second fall semester, I had the mechanics of delivering lectures and assessing students via homework, quizzes, and reports down pat.  Yet I was not feeling the joy my earlier exposures to teaching gave me.  I had become competent at and comfortable with delivering content, which some people call teaching.  This is what my former math teachers did and I wanted to be better than them.

A series of unfortunate events during spring semester of my second year teaching changed everything.  Within about a week I had one student come to me with severe depression, another had just lost his brother to suicide, a third had a parent terminally ill with cancer.  I was overwhelmed with what these students were dealing with in their personal lives and how it was affecting their academics.  That week I said aloud, “What I really need in this job is a PhD in counseling!” In conversations with the academic counselors in my department, amazing women and colleagues, it dawned on me our students needed more than people who could deliver technical content and grade them on their abilities to prove their comprehension.  They needed adults who cared about them both inside and outside of the academic arena.  Sometimes they needed advice; other times just someone to listen.  It was then I turned to the VT Center for Excellence and Teaching (formerly CIDER) to learn more about how to work with better with students.  I eventually found and enrolled in the VT Graduate Certificate Program in Engineering Education where I have learned volumes about truly teaching and not just communicating content.  I will complete my certification in December of this year.

Instead of finding joy in watching others “get it”, I joyously experienced my own ah-ha moment realizing that being a teacher is much harder than I thought.  Now I understood that done well, teaching is a holistic effort of delivering content, compassion, and encouragement.  What I loved about my earlier exposure to teaching was not just explaining skiing or fractions, it was the personal connection formed with students, when I was helping them learn new information by showing them their own potential for success.  This is what it means to be a teacher and an advisor and it is what I strive to do in my job every day.  Moreover, it is exactly what my high school math teachers did not understand.

Throughout our readings this week, and the prompting of Seth Godin’s TEDxYouth talk, I keep coming back to the question of what purpose should school fill?

It’s an easy enough question, right? Personally, I am not so sure. I feel like the overall objectives of education, for me, are fairly easy to identify: explore and exchange knowledge, stimulate higher levels of thought and consideration, foster connections between learners and their passions. However, how these objectives are realized and what they mean to the individual learner might muddy the waters, so to speak.

Everyone that will read this blog, at some level, is deeply interested in education. Many of us have spent the majority of our lives in the classroom (either learning, teaching, and in some cases daydreaming) and are pursing degrees to stay in the classroom -or the laboratory- with the goal of devoting our lives to the understanding, expansion, and sharing of knowledge. For us, education is our livelihood, our passion, and the lens with which we view the world around us. Obviously, our view of education is influenced by the high value we place in it.

I see education largely as a way of bettering myself and the community around me. Education leads to knowledge, and knowledge (through teaching) leads back to education. The implementation of knowledge with innovation enacts (hopefully positive) change.  The process and purpose is cyclical, fluid, ever changing and rooted in the intersection of learning, thinking, and sharing.

Then again, my purpose for education might be different than yours, and it might be different then someone not pursing a PhD or looking to devote their live to the pursuit of knowledge. For me, I think this is okay, and that the purpose of education (much like many of the concepts we applied in this course) can/should be shaped by the individual, and take on a person-centric purpose.

Maybe I wrong.

I admit I do not have anywhere close to all the answers, but I think the implication Seth Godin’s talk (which I did largely enjoy!) had, that there is a singular correct purpose, is somewhat disingenuous. From some, education can be based more in thinking, for others maybe it is more about learning (a skill, or a trade, or a technique that allows them to pursue a passion), or some combination of both. At early levels maybe it is about developing social skills, and the ability to communicate, interact with, and function in a civilized society. Should school’s purpose be stealing dreams and replacing them with interchangeable archetypes – as see by the industrial worker example? Certainly not, but maybe the impact school has in preparing young people to function in society, and exposing them to various perspectives of thought is just as important now as it has ever been.  My point is, education and school can take on a number of different purposes throughout our lives and there isn’t a singular, objectively correct approach to education and continuing to accept the assumption that there is will only lead to frustration – on the part of the educator, learner, and administrator.

There are certainly better ways to educate (especially on an individual level), and maybe even more noble purposes of education, but if we accept that education can be defined in a number of different ways we have to be willing to accept that other definitions may not perfectly align with our own. I think the goal of teaching should always be centered in creating an environmental that allows individuals to get out of education what they want, especially when the participants are old enough to identify what that is.

Shifting gears a bit…..  If the current model of school/education was designed around the need for interchanged industrial work, as Godin asserts, what does an education system look like designed around a society/economy built on automation and the replacement of ‘unskilled’ labor? How do you teach people to be smarter or more innovative?  When teaching people to be innovative is a notoriously difficult task?

I will say having being through the collegiate meat grinder I was always a little upset that I had to pay all this extra money for classes I though weren’t important for my major (film video studies, world dance, English classes, etc.). I did not have an appreciation for these classes at the time. I think Dan Edelstein’s piece really sums up the difference between humanities and the “hard” sciences. Engineers are taught a baseline knowledge initially where there is typically one answer or a minimum answer at least, while the humanities use more original thinking and have a bunch of creative answers. The originality is what gets you a good grade as opposed to engineering, where deviating from the norm is shunned. I think even though I didn’t appreciate it at the time taking humanities courses engaged the other side of my brain and made me a better critical thinker. Young engineers I will tell you a secret, once you get to design there is no one correct answer there are a ton. I am grateful for this different way of thinking and being able to come up with an array of answers to the problem at hand. As a final note now as I am approaching the end of my “formal education” I want to take more courses outside my major, like drawing and foreign language courses. I am glad we have the system setup the way it is and I will be a big proponent of taking as many courses outside your major as possible. I really do believe it makes you a well-rounded student.

I think the following from Dan Edelstein really sums up his piece nicely: “it is not that humanities disciplines are more innovative than their scientific counterparts: it is simply that students are required to practice innovative thinking earlier on in their studies. Though there is a great difference in outcome between, say, a close reading of Balzac’s Père Goriot and the development of a new software operating system, both rely on similar cognitive processes.”

I would like to share a few thoughts about a book that I reading right now that is relevant to this class by “Disrupting Class” by Clayton M. Christensen. If you haven’t had the chance to read it, I strongly recommend it. The book is well-researched and very insightful on the state of higher education today and a few possible directions it might take in the near future.

On page 9 of the introduction the book quotes John Adams. It says:

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

This last group, the group that has the freedom to pursue whatever they find interesting, seems to be a pretty good description of the Millennial Generation, my generation. We live in a prosperous time and should do all that we can to distribute prosperity. We were raised by the Baby Boomers, who were raised by the WWII generation. The WWII generation (if we are speaking in terms of the collective in this period, not individuals) were forced to war and had fewer options at education and career choice. Many of them worked in trade jobs their entire lives because they had little chance to further their education that was disrupted by the political conditions of the time. My great grandfather was one of them. After he came back from WWII he was a painter. Because he was a painter his whole life he made sure that his four sons had the chance to go to college to study engineering, math, science, business, etc. His son, my grandfather, the first of his family to go college studied physics. A little later my father went to college to study engineering. Both physics and engineering are intensely difficult subjects to study. I took one course in statics and one course in introductory physics….and no more. My grandfather and father studied these subjects because these fields provide lucrative employment opportunities, and not necessarily because they are in love with the second law of thermodynamics. Because of their hard work and sacrifice I was recipient of opportunities that my progenitors never had. For possibly the first time in my family history, I had the chance to study WHATEVER I wanted. What a privilege that was! Also, what a responsibility.

I now have two daughters and I will encourage them to study what they are interested in and what they can become gainfully employed in. I want to them to be able to support themselves, to pursue prosperity, however they define it, and to pass it on to their children, and their neighbors, in even greater abundance than they received it.