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.

Teaching Energy With NGSS

The 2017 Flame Challenge presented the challenge of explaining what energy is and even within the best of the best explanations there is a hesitancy to actually define what energy is.  Energy is a challenging topic because it appears to be utilized differently across scientific fields.  I propose here that energy would be better off viewed with a consistent framework that limits energy use to one of convenience rather than its current inconsistent use.  

What Is Energy?

Energy is a mathematical shortcut to solving physics problems.  It is highly convenient to use because energy calculations can greatly simplify calculations for when force is variable or when there are a large number of particles.  Objects do not possess energy, rather we can describe them using an energy that we define.  A similar concept is momentum.  There is no such thing as momentum, it is a mathematical concept that allows us to simplify calculations involving collisions.  Momentum is convenient because you do not need to know all of the information about what happens in the middle of a collision.  Momentum is a math function that works because of how we defined it mathematically and the laws of motion in physics.  Energy is also a math function that works because of how we defined it mathematically and the laws of motion in physics.  

Our definition of energy is the integral of force over a displacement.  Depending on the type of force being opposed we come up with different equations which we call different forms of energy.  If we push an object and the force is unopposed this results in a change in velocity of the object.  The integral in this case produces the equation ½*mass*velocity2* which we call kinetic energy.  If we push an object against Earth’s gravitational field the integral produces the equation mass*gravity*height (mgh)**.  

So if we drop an object from a height of 9.8 m and we want to know how fast it is traveling just before contacting the ground we have two options.  We can use kinematics and determine how long it will take to reach the ground and then calculate what the velocity will be at this time.  We would use the kinematics equations below to accomplish this through some simple manipulations.  

vf = vi + at

pf = ½at2 + vit + pi

Our initial position is 9.8 m, final position is 0, initial velocity is 0 and thus the 2nd equation plugged in would be 0 = -4.9t2 + 9.8 where t = 2(0.5).  We can plus this time into the first equation to obtain the final velocity of -9.8*2(0.5) = -13.9 m/s.  

We can alternatively use the sum of initial potential and kinetic energies.  We can define the final height to be 0 and so initially our kinetic energy is 0, potential is mgh.  Our final situation has a kinetic energy of ½ mv2 and potential of 0.  If the total amount of energy is conserved we get

mgh = ½ mv2; which simplifies to v = (2gh)(0.5) = +/-13.9 m/s and since our downward direction was previously defined as negative we get a final velocity of -13.9 m/s.  The energy calculation produces the correct answer with simpler mathematics.  

*actual result is ½mvf2 - ½mvi2

** actual result is mg(hf-hi)

Guidelines for teachers

1. Anything you can explain with energy can also be explained using force, position and motion.  If you cannot explain how something works without energy, you will probably not explain it well using energy.  Energy is a shortcut both in mathematics and justification of phenomena and so it is important to have a strong framework in place prior to utilizing energy as a means of convenience.  
2. Energy is linked with force and motion.  Potential energies are all derived from an integration of a force over a displacement.  Therefore we should not be inventing energies that do not link directly with a force.  There is no “chemical force” and therefore using the term “chemical energy” is misleading.  There are electrical forces, nuclear forces, gravitational forces and we also have kinetic energy derived from an unopposed force that causes a change in motion.  Chemicals may be assigned an energy but it is electrical energy and kinetic energy, not chemical energy.  
3. Heat is a transfer of energy and the mechanism of heat gets very cloudy when people present heat energy as a type of energy.  Heat energy is a means of describing the kinetic energy from molecular motion and would be better off either using kinetic energy or thermal energy as descriptions.  Thermal energy and heat energy have the same intent of definition but thermal energy is much easier to distinguish from heat.  This allows us to define heat as a transfer and not an energy allowing us to better emphasize the role of collisions and molecular motion during heat transfer.  
4. There are situations where using motion, position and force would be overwhelming and thus energy is needed.  This is the case often in chemistry because of the sheer number of particles coupled with a lack of information about specific motion.  
5. Some situations we do not currently have explanations for without energy.  This is because of the complexity of the situation and our inability to analyze them that limits our discussion to energy shortcuts.  For example, the motion of electrons in atoms is not possible to be viewed.  We cannot track an electron without disturbing how it moves.  Our information we get about electron motion comes mostly from interactions between the electron and light.  Thus it is needed for us to discuss this in terms of energy because the simplistic nature of energy allows us to have meaningful relationships developed even though we are unable to explain quantization in more accurate terms.  But this does not mean that the electron does not follow a set of rules beyond energy, rather that we are limited in our observations and explanations.  
6. Light is not energy, fire is not energy, food is not energy.  Light can be assigned an energy value based on its frequency but we can also just explain that there is a connection between the initial vibration of the charged particle that produces the light and what the light will be able to do to the particle that absorbs it.  Instead of describing light as energy try linking light to the charged particle it comes from and the electric field disturbance caused by the acceleration of the charged particle.