The Frightening Truth

I’m a teacher. Well I’m not paid, but I do teach, so I think it’s fair to say that I’m a teacher. I’m probably not like most teachers. Most of my lesson planning takes place while I’m staring out the window during my commute, or as I relax in bed as I fall asleep. This time used to be called “day dreaming about physics,” but the title “lesson planning” seems more important, or rather, makes it seem as though my dreaming is actually work.

I don’t actually start to write out my lesson plan until the last minute; sometimes the night before, but often the morning of. That way I can ensure that my lessons have been giving a large degree of thought, and I can minimize the rigidity of the lesson.

Today’s lesson (note, I wrote this a few weeks prior to posting it) for my two grade 11 physics classes was a perfect example of what I think to be a great lesson. We’ve been doing a unit on vectors, and most of the classes have involved a heavy workload (for the students). Since we were ahead, I wanted to think of a fun physics lecture (for some of you, this might be impossible to imagine). I decided to teach a really cool result from special relativity that tied into our unit on relative motion (this topic, first presented to me by my brother Matthew, sparked much of my interest in physics). It also was exactly what teaching should be about. I showed them a logic progression of classical reasoning, which lead right to an error, then they had to tell me what was wrong with what we did (this wasn’t at all obvious, it’s a counterintuitive result).

So where’s the frightening part? Most people would have found nothing wrong. The lesson went well, was understood by the class, and the relativistic problem sparked a conversation where many students tried to argue where we had erred. The ugly part came when they found out they wouldn’t be tested on the material. Some students felt tricked into copying notes that they would “need,” that they wouldn’t be tested on. I was disappointed. Instead of talking about boring vectors, I showed them something about the world, something about physics. I then stopped and asked a simple question: “Who of you would like to learn only things that you will be tested on.” Three out of the 17 students present raised their hands; with I’m sure more that decided not to vote.

That was the frightening truth; that some students were more interested in succeeding then in learning. I felt like yelling “who cares about marks!” but that’s like asking an adult to forget about money.

But not all of my teaching experience has been like this. Here’s a story which warmed my heart. During a physics test I had for my grade 12’s, I included a particularly difficult bonus question. It asked to derive centripetal acceleration, a beautiful sight for someone eager to apply his or her calculus skills. Near the end of the test, I saw one (particularly bright) student copying down the bonus question (it included a lot of hints so there was much to copy down). I asked him why he was rewriting it and he told me, which eagerness in his eyes, that he wanted to try it at home. If that doesn’t strike you emotionally, it probably never will. That interaction, small as it may seem, proved to me that there will always be some students who will want to learn for its own sake.

So far I’ve taught for a total of 2 months, and I’ve only written one post. Over the next little while, I’ll try to catch up (those who are curious) the life of Gaven as a teacher.