A Summer of Teaching: Lessons Learned

This Summer I taught in two different environments that broadened my perspective on teaching.  I spent the early summer working with fourteen middle-schoolers, aged ten to twelve for about seven hours a day five days a week for three weeks.  It was both amazing and exhausting to work with some many energetic students for such an intensive period. The late summer I spent teaching physics in Vietnam to two sections of twenty five students cramming a ten week quarter into just over three weeks of instruction.

In June and July I had the privilege of working with highly motivated and talented individuals who chose to come summer camp and focus on science and engineering.  My students were just one of about fourteen classes that focused on different fields with in the science engineering disciplines, as well as math and writing courses.

Throughout the three weeks I had the pleasure of getting to know my students and those in many other classes as well. Working with these young eager minds, intent on learning, and making sense of the world around us reminded me why  I  teach; to share the joy of learning and thinking to even more people.

The challenges I faced in designing my own curriculum and modifying my lessons to suite the needs, interests and aptitudes of my diverse class room were instructive. How best to teach a class with a student who is ready for trigonometry and calculus, an another who has difficulties with basic algebra?  What to do when students levels of reading and verbal comprehension differ drastically?  How to make the best use of a teaching assistant when we were both in the class at the same time?

I don't think I really answered any of these or the myriad of other questions that came up from teaching at a summer camp but I certainly did find being forced to think about them beneficial.

In Vietnam I taught and learned from a population of students that was very different from any I have taught previously.  These students worked hard though challenged with course materials written in English.  I was forced to rethink many of my assumptions about the benefits and detriments of students learning to play the "school game."  Often I had thought that the "school game" with its focus on grades over mastery and understanding, was at worst a hindrance to students learning.  In Vietnam the students had been exposed to a very different educational system.  Their educational system appeared to value group work and consensus. Additionally there appears to have been a stronger focus on mathematical proficiency in prior courses.  On the down side I had a harder time maintaining order and focus with the students, and the culture of communal work, so beneficial in lab meetings, carried over into examination settings.

On the whole I think it was a very educational summer.  I had to think about many teaching issues that have not come up for me in my regular TA and AI roles here at  U.C. Davis.