I think the great thing about having students who have really deep knowledge of math and
science in these classes is that they draw upon that in the way that they think about
math and science. So it's not just about math that, you know, happens in a textbook that
lives on a piece of paper, but math that's embodied in engineering, math that's embodied
in their lives, math that they can kind of think about in interesting and different ways.
Same with science, you know, it's about science in practice that they may have done from a
UROP on campus, or from some other experience that they've had interacting with faculty
that have done research in those areas. So they can bring that to the classroom -- they
can bring their own experience and their own passion for Math and Science.
They bring so much to the classroom. And I don't need to sort of say like, "Well, you
really need to understand what's great about science before you understand how to communicate
that to students, or to understand what's great about... that math is a language that
we can use in lots of ways. You need to understand that before you can teach math." I don't need
to do any of that for the students here, and students who come from more diverse, sort
of backgrounds with their own experience with math and science do sort of need to learn
that first. They need to understand what's great about science; they need to understand
how math is a language that helps us understand the world. And so I think that if I were teaching
in a different university, I'd probably need to help students learn that first before they
actually tried to convey that to their own students, and I'm fortunate enough to not
have to do that here.
For most of the students, math and science have always come really easily to them. They've
sat in a room, someone's perhaps lectured at them, and they've kind of gotten it. They
can do well on the tests, and they can move on. And, sometimes it's a struggle for them
to think about, "Why... why is this student not getting it? You know, the teacher told
it to them just like they told it to me, and yet I understood it and this student didn't."
And it's a matter of trying to think about, "How do you break that
down to help them understand that everybody sort of thinks about the world differently
and thinks about their own learning differently?" and how to accept that challenge.