Guiding Questions

Thinking about how to teach often leaves me with more questions than answers. So it seems fitting to write my views on teaching like I would a recitation. Let's start with a core idea, ask some questions, and see where it takes us.

Starting with one of my core beliefs: teaching is built on trust. It's not enough to show up to recitation, explain concepts well, and answer questions. Students have to believe time spent with me is useful. They have to trust me to be comfortable asking questions or saying they're confused, and they have to believe I want them to succeed. This leads to a question I always consider: How can I build trust with my students?

With trust comes students telling you about individual and personal situations, and consequently, the realization that official course policy or common practice may not be the optimal way for all of them to learn. This raises another question that you will inevitably face when teaching: When should I make an exception?

Finally, while it is wonderful to build relationships with your students and support them while they are in your class, you also have to set them up for success when you're no longer there. Especially when teaching an intro class, the connections students form and the experiences they have with collaboration in your class can have a large impact on the rest of their college careers. For this reason, I think you need to ask yourself: How can I build a community where good collaboration happens?

Now, I've posed some questions, but I purposely haven't given a lot of answers. I believe when teaching you should always encourage your students to think independently first. If I immediately gave an answer to every question asked, I would rob students of the ability to think and problem solve themselves. However, once they've had a chance to think, I believe you should provide them copious examples of good work. So now I want you to take a minute to think about your answers to the questions above, and then I'll give you an example of how I answer them.

How can I build trust with my students? I always follow through. It can take weeks to build trust, and one interaction to break it. Most importantly, I treat students as individuals. I learn their names. Before and after recitation I talk to them about their weeks. And crucially, I ask my students their goals. Not everyone wants an A or a career in CS. It's my job to understand what they want out of my class and help them achieve it.

When should I make an exception? To answer this question, I ask myself two other ones. First, why does this practice exist? Sometimes, it can have the opposite effect it intended to, and in these situations it is clear that either an exception or a policy change should be made. Second, what are this student's goals? Even if we try to structure our courses to benefit a majority of students, there will always be students that fall outside the group a policy was created to help. In these cases I often make exceptions that are in the student's best interest. I am here to facilitate learning, not to blindly enforce rules.

How can I build a community where good collaboration happens? I try to get students invested in each others' learning. I build collaboration into recitations, and I emphasize that success is measured not in individual understanding, but group understanding. While students are working together in class, I pull quieter group members into the conversation. By encouraging good collaboration in recitation, I hope students learn the benefits of both listening to others, and helping each other, and continue that pattern outside of class.

While these answers are representative of how I teach, they certainly don't represent a single "right answer" to the complicated question of how to do this job. Just as students benefit from collaborating and seeing many different solutions, teachers do too. If there's one piece of advice you take away from this, it should be to keep learning. Don't ask one person how to teach and try to perfectly emulate them. Seek out many examples of how people teach, form your own style, and constantly iterate on it.

Along those lines, hundreds of past students and teachers have influenced the way I teach, but there are a few who deserve special thanks: Prithvi Okade, who taught me that you can achieve so much more with the respect of your students and staff. Kyra Balenzano, who taught me that sometimes being strict is the best way to be kind. Austin Schick, who taught me that big ideas can become reality. David Kosbie, who taught me to believe in myself and trust my instincts. My middle school math teachers Sara Folger and Jeff Edmonds, who taught me how fun teaching can be. And finally, Mark Stehlik, who taught me to treat everyone as an individual, to always be willing to listen, and to be my students' biggest advocates. Their teaching philosophies and ideas live on in me, as I hope some of mine do in my students and junior TAs. Maybe the most beautiful thing about teaching is that we don't just impact the students we work with directly. We also impact future generations of students long after we're gone with the lessons we impart on those around us.