Why I Became a Teacher - Conference Diaries Vol II
There has been a wave of transformation across education to say the least. Our new normal is trying to predict the unpredictable - class sizes, delivery modes, technology, all can change or evaporate overnight. As much as teachers champion life-long learning at university, I don’t think we quite bargained for a life-time of learning condensed into such a short time. With so many things up in the air, it is more important now than ever before to reflect on our origin story in education. What motivated us to become teachers in the first place has to be what what keeps us going in this time of uncertainty.
When I was a student, everything made sense. It simply came down to how much I could memorise before every exam. I just had to read all the lecture slides, textbook sections, and do practice exams over and over again. I couldn’t memorise everything, but I came awfully close and this type of learning was rewarded - high GPA, university medal, scholarships, you name it. I continued on to postgrad training as a molecular microbiologist, thinking I had it all figured out but of course - in science there’s no point to memorising everything - the knowledge is always changing.
There were no more exams to study for, so I spent months reading books and searching for answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask, or existed in the first place.
Constructing knowledge is not the same as regurgitating someone else’s information and I needed to re-learn how to learn, all over again.
As a microbiologist in training, I was studying tiny molecules used by pathogens to infect human cells, invisible to the naked eye. This may sound interesting and certainly relevant to our current situation, but believe me 10 years ago nobody around me cared. Every time I tried to explain the specifics of my research, and why molecular machinations were fascinating, I could see the classic blank expression fall over their faces.
A cocktail of boredom mixed with a dash of contempt - as if they assumed all science was interesting by default until my explanation ruined everything and they could no longer hide their disappointment from bubbling to the surface.
Looking back on it now, I can’t blame them. I simply didn’t have the communication skills at that time to connect my discipline to people’s everyday lives.
This dilemma is what I have centred all of my teaching practice around - creating large-scale citizen science projects for thousands of students to conduct hands on research, while training early career scientists in science communication using videos, podcasts, and social media. I want to connect the general public to my discipline through the work of our students, and inquiry and communication underlines everything we do.
This is my origin story as a teacher, presented through my Keynote Address at the 2022 Australian Awards for University Teaching Award ceremony in Adelaide, South Australia.
Jack.
