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Gratification
Apr. 26th, 2007 12:10 pmIt's always sweet when my students express their appreciation for how I teach. Some days I feel like there are so many different things I would like for them to learn, but there's only so much I can say and do to get them to learn.
The especially difficult cases are the ones where students just don't really understand (for themselves) why they are in the classroom or how they should be trying to think about the material or what they should take away from the experience. For all the students who seem to benefit greatly from their experiences in my class, there are usually just as many who seem happy just to be done with the whole ordeal, without necessarily bothering to learn anything.
I have to seriously hope that the stuff I'm trying to teach them has infected their minds and that they'll find themselves thinking about it at other moments in their lives, like when they pick up the newspaper and read about scientific findings or read about governmental policy related to science.
The end of the semester always makes me a little bit wistful, because I know I'll probably never see those students again or know what sort of long-term impact I've had. But I often think back to professors or TAs that I had as an undergrad that were influential, which makes me hope that my students will do the same thing.
The especially difficult cases are the ones where students just don't really understand (for themselves) why they are in the classroom or how they should be trying to think about the material or what they should take away from the experience. For all the students who seem to benefit greatly from their experiences in my class, there are usually just as many who seem happy just to be done with the whole ordeal, without necessarily bothering to learn anything.
I have to seriously hope that the stuff I'm trying to teach them has infected their minds and that they'll find themselves thinking about it at other moments in their lives, like when they pick up the newspaper and read about scientific findings or read about governmental policy related to science.
The end of the semester always makes me a little bit wistful, because I know I'll probably never see those students again or know what sort of long-term impact I've had. But I often think back to professors or TAs that I had as an undergrad that were influential, which makes me hope that my students will do the same thing.
