Five Good Reasons To Go Into Teaching

When I ask students I am surprised at how thoroughly students would be able to explain to me why teaching was not an option for them. It is not a decision that they have made lightly. They know the projections of pay, the direction of legislation and the costs that they would need to input. But there are also good reasons to go into teaching that they are not aware of. 

Unsettled research

The access teachers have had to cognitive science research and how learning works has been limited until recently. As we continue to improve our understanding of learning, the research connecting that cognitive research to teaching is stuck. Teaching must be complex enough to cause permanent change in the brain structure. Teaching must also be simple enough to not overwhelm the short term memory capacity. Many teachers and researchers embrace one of those ideals but not both. Thus a large conflict prevents us from pushing education research ahead. That will change in the near future and you would be able to be a part of that. Other fields have research that is so advanced and settled. Our knowledge of medicine, economics, philosophy, science and mathematics are advanced to a point where the specifics are so advanced that they contribute little. But education has so much room for growth and improvement. Soon our abilities to teach and learn those other fields will be limited to how quickly we can educate people to the point where they can understand the new research needs of them. 

Autonomy 

The most important factors in a career is not money. Study after study shows that having autonomy in your job is one of the biggest keys to being happy and feeling impactful. Next week I will be teaching about chemical reactions. The number of approaches and methods that I could use to do that is unlimited. I have so much control over what I choose to do. I can experiment and try something new. I can take ideas from other teachers. I can do what I did last time with minor changes. On Tuesday I will be doing a new lesson that I got the idea from a book that I am currently reading. At any given moment when inspiration hits I am able to put that idea into action. What other job has that at this level? 

Ability to learn with an audience to keep you accountable

There was a reading teacher next door to me who would put up posters where she would put the book covers of books she read. I started to do so and quickly found myself reading more and more books. I am currently reading my 54th book this year and I love it. But being a teacher is a huge reason why I love it. I get to share what I read and learn with my students. If I read an interesting book about rust, I am able to use that in a lesson with my class. Everything that I learn about I have an audience to reinforce my own learning as I share it. I’m not convinced that if I went into work and was restricted from sharing my learning that it would not carry the same meaning to me. Whether the topic is history, chemistry, geography, environmental science, cognition or something else; I can always connect those topics to my teaching. It enhances my teaching. 

The most difficult job

Teaching is the most difficult job that exists. The sheer volume of decisions that teachers make during a lesson is enormous. No matter how well you teach something there is always a way to improve your lesson because there are so many different options you have. Having the ability to deal with managing children in a way that optimizes their learning involves decisions about their cognition, their prior knowledge, their emotional health, the physical arrangement of the room and the lesson medium. Because of the overwhelming number of students (150-250) you must have plans for an incredible number of disruptions and adjustments to make. You have to introduce a new idea in a way that maximizes learning, provide practice that maximizes learning and give assessments that measure the learning that took place. All of that must be done to a large group of students with wildly different experiences and prior knowledge. Whether the goal is to maximize learning or to maximize homogeneity in knowledge is inconsistent depending on the objective, course and content piece. Behind all of these pieces is the content itself. I must understand all of the chemistry I am presenting which includes all of the chemistry that students perceive. I must understand and be prepared to respond to every conception that a student brings to the classroom along with what evidence and theory can advance those conceptions to better models. It is an unending journey towards a perfection that doesn’t exist even in theory. No other profession comes close to the combination of skills needed to maximize success. And that challenge is welcome. Teachers seek challenge. They want to be pushed to the limits of human ability. 

Online networks

When I was in high school teachers were isolated. They would seek community in lounges, but the atmosphere was potentially toxic. With social media teachers are able to connect with other teachers. We have access to the best of the best and can use each other to further our own abilities. The sharing and cooperation that results from social media has opened new doors to teachers from mentorship opportunities, to highlighting creativity, to challenging our own conceptions and ideas about teaching. These networks incentivize teachers to push beyond the typical boundaries of teaching that have existed in the past. Teachers can share improved models, dual coding and concrete examples for content. Teachers can share research, new pedagogy and more advanced curriculum. Teachers can learn from others about organization, technology, and creativity in lessons.

Do people with lighter skin have different sunscreen needs?

We spent a class period researching in groups and a class period discussing our findings.  The prompt was to construct an argument that skin color matters for sunscreen use and an argument that skin color does not matter.  From there our groups diverged greatly as they built up arguments and pertinent explanations.  

Figure 1:  Whiteboard 1 explores the mechanism by which UV light causes DNA mutations

The wide variety of information in the various whiteboards led to some great discussion on content as well as generic science.  We discussed if knowing the mechanism of DNA damage by UV light is relevant so long as we see the data in Whiteboard 2 (below).  Students split but offered mostly arguments that mechanism knowledge is highly relevant to evaluate the conclusions from the data of skin cancer rates.  Multiple examples were offered such as some races might be located where they experience different exposure to sunlight, different races might also use different amounts of sunscreen on average and reporting of race can be inconsistent.  In general most students felt that just knowing skin cancer rates is insufficient and could be correlation without causation.  

We also talked about the mechanism by which UV light originates and under what conditions an electron can accelerate so much that it produces such high frequency light.  We connected the emission and absorption of light with the Balmer series for hydrogen.  We reviewed the spacing of energy levels and I instructed about the differences in energy level spacings for gaseous atoms/ions compared to molecular excitations.  We connected this later with Whiteboard 6 by talking about how a slight adjustment to a molecule can cause a minor change in the frequencies of light absorbed and how pigments and dye research often utilizes electron rich and electron deficient functional groups to shift color.   

Figure 2:  Whiteboard 2 found cancer rates based on race

Figure 3:  Whiteboard 3 went full “Natural News” to locate some arguments against
sunscreen

This board led to a good discussion on sources of scientific information, how sources manipulate data and experiment into “clickbait” articles.  We posed the question “Are any of these things actually bad or do they just sound bad?”  For example, if sunscreen ingredients are present in breastmilk, is that bad or is it so infrequent and low in concentration that it is irrelevant?  We talked about how the FDA does not have jurisdiction over supplements and how labels for supplements are sometimes shown to be incorrect.  We also compared this board to the risks of not wearing sunscreen using Whiteboard 2 (above).  

Figure 4:  Whiteboard 4 summarized different wavelengths of UV light and nanoparticles
used for sunscreens

Figure 5:  Whiteboard 5 looks at melanin and interactions of sunscreens with UV light

Figure 6:  Whiteboard 6 looks at different chemical structures utilized in sunscreens

Conclusions that students made included that the SPF data they saw suggested that anything over SPF 50 was a marketing scam and was less healthy than using SPF 50 or lower.  We concluded that the mechanisms by which electrons change motion during electronic transitions in molecules are incredibly difficult to visualize and that this uncertainty can be problematic for understanding.  We concluded that everyone exposed to sun should wear sunscreen because melanin mostly protects from sunburn but not from DNA damage.  We saw a variety of organic molecules used to absorb UV light as well as alternatives such as ZnO nanoparticles.  We started our discussion by looking at how 11 cis-retinal converts into 11 trans-retinal when absorbing visible light and this is the mechanism by which our brain becomes aware of light hitting our retinas.  We talked about the breaking of the pi bond before the rotation occurs and later compared this to potential changes in molecular structure when UV light is absorbed by molecules in sunscreen.  

As a teaching lesson I was highly pleased with the variety of topics to discuss and the variety of information students used to make arguments.  Students looked at chemical structures, DNA damage mechanisms, skin cancer data, sunburn data and how UV light itself varies.  We identified what type of light escapes the sun as a subject that requires more research.  We will continue to use this topic throughout our review.  We saw connections to organic chemistry, quantum chemistry, periodic trends and bonding.  It was interesting to the majority of students.  Some students asked what it was like to be sunburned because they had never experienced it before and most students had limited ideas coming into the discussion but left with much better knowledge.