The art of teaching
“There is too much focus on the Science vs. the Art of Teaching”
Kai Deuitch, fellow University of Waterloo engineer, fellow teacher.
My story will begin in my final year of high school. Back then, in Ontario this was Grade 13; I told my English teacher I would be applying for an Engineering degree. The energy in the room shifted - I was excited, she scowled. "Engineers don't do well in English". Fast forward a number of years, I have finished my engineering degree, and I have left my engineering job of buying rotating equipment (things that go round-and-round really fast was my introduction to the job) and am in my 1st year teaching. I am excited, I have found an article about the decreasing air pressure when climbing Everest and the resulting effects on the body. A series of questions then guide students to understand and differentiate between the main points of the article versus interesting details, as well as which facts are explicitly stated vs. implied. Perfect ... a great way to make a class teaching about the atmosphere more interesting (this is pre-internet), and teach some transferable skills. I excitedly share my idea with a colleague who looks at me and says "I don't teach English." What??? Really ??? We live in an interconnected world. Math is a language. Art is science, science is art and stories ignite students’ imaginations. Reading from Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is always a hit with students - especially when accompanied with the words - “sit back, relax, close your eyes and listen”.
Even engineers, actually especially engineers, need to communicate clearly - whether it is in their calculations or their words. There is a reason we took a printing class in our first year at Waterloo Engineering! When they don’t, bad things happen. Take the Mars rover which crashed 125 million dollars in 1999 due to the miscommunication of units. (Stay tuned for my future posts on units).
When you come down to it, the real world does not exist in separate cupboards titled "physics" "math" "english", ‘history” “art” etc.. Nor in Science department drawers labelled as “biology” “chemistry” “physics”. In the fall of 2018, while teaching an Environmental Science course, the school asked teachers to incorporate WWI into our teaching as the world commemorated the 100th anniversary of the end of The Great War. It was especially poignant in France. I was amazed how by using another favourite book,
Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, students were able to weave together concepts from the Nobel Prize, to Zyclon B (used in the gas chambers of WWII) to nitrates from leftover bombs being converted to fertiliser leading to mass commercialisation of corn crops and a change in the average American diet. Each student then created a timeline or mindmap using images, links, text to understand the connections of the historical, scientific and social puzzle pieces. Food Inc. - based on The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a must-see.
Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating doing away with teaching individual subjects. Subject specialty is necessary to bring forth a true understanding of the nuances which too often are hidden in the details. Perhaps by compartmentalising things we make the whole difficult to understand … by appreciating the magic of how everything comes together and teaching with threads from other subjects, learning comes to life and has meaning.