Go Deep!
From Richard C. Larson
 STEM teaching in high schools: There’s so much to cover. And so little time to prepare an excellent lesson. According to the OECD, U.S. high school teachers are employed to work almost 2,000 hours per year. For every hour of in-class instruction, there is only about one other hour to do everything else: grade papers, figure out homework assignments, prepare next lessons and do PD – Professional Development. Good luck with that! Adding to the stress is that “The System” always seems to be changing. These days we can point to implementation of Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Beyond frequent changes like these, we have on-going debates about “teaching to a test” with such high value placed – by parents and colleges – on students’ numerical scores on multiple-choice tests. A teacher’s job security may be at risk if the students in her/his class do not score high enough. No wonder there is such teacher turnover/dropout, especially in the early years.
Having taught at MIT for many years, I cannot even contemplate what it must be like to be a high school STEM teacher operating in this environment. Call it “Stress City”! Something needs to be done – structurally, to relieve the stress and to bring greater job satisfaction to each teacher. New technologies may be great, but the most important component of each classroom is the teacher. She not only presents the material to the students, she acts as guide, mentor and motivator. The teacher directly affects each student’s passion to learn and eventual choice of major field of study.
In reflecting on my own teaching, I find I am most relaxed and provide my best lessons on subjects I know deeply, “in my soul.” I am much less relaxed and probably teach least effectively when I am presenting material for which I have no first-hand knowledge. I believe the students experience this too, as they can see my passion much more clearly when I’m presenting and discussing a topic I know deeply. They are motivated to learn more when they are presented a topic known very well by their teacher. This is all easy for me to say, a faculty member at a research university. I get first-hand knowledge doing research, usually with students as colleagues. But how is a STEM high school teacher to obtain first-hand knowledge of some of the topics she teaches?
Here is my idea: Change the Rules in order support each and every STEM high school teacher Going Deep in at least one aspect of what she teaches. By Going Deep, I mean that the teacher becomes a true content expert on that particular topic. She reads books and articles about the topic. She studies how best to teach it, and how students best learn it. Instructional hours are freed up, maybe about 100 hours per year, to provide time for this effort. Ideally, each teacher would be supported to attend and participate in one professional conference per year, a conference that included presentation of Best Practices in teaching the “Going Deep” content. My hypothesis is that such a plan would enhance a teacher’s professional pride and overall job satisfaction, give her great motivation, and provide a wonderful role model to her students. Also, a teacher who is a content expert – say in matrices, or angular momentum, or DNA, or plastics – is an important resource to the school district. She can share that knowledge by visiting other classrooms, thereby magnifying the impact of her expertise. Of course, if all teachers are able to Go Deep in varied topics, the classroom sharing can become a common practice.
Please let me know your thoughts on this idea… Crazy bad or crazy good? And if good, what are the chief impediments we need to overcome? Email me at rclarson@mit.edu. Thanks.
Richard Larson is the Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. He is also the Director of MIT LINC and the Principal Investigator of MIT BLOSSOMS.
Back to newsletter |
