Last summer, before I began this anatomy teaching residency, I was speaking to a mentor and he asked me a really simple question, “Why do you want to be a teacher?”
I answered that in my experience as a tutor, I really enjoyed it when my teaching led to students having ‘light bulb’ moments. Like the click of a lamp illuminating a darkened room, I was able to help struggling students make sense of the material they hadn’t be able to understand.
He smirked as if he had known that’s what I was going to say. He believed that many people initially become teachers for that same reason but then challenged me to find another motivation. He too enjoys producing light bulb moments in students but believes that it’s not enough to serve someone through a career in teaching.
At the time, I don’t think I really appreciated what he was saying but now that I’m in the classroom and teaching daily, I think I understand. Some days, trying to create light bulb moments in students feels like trying to light a candle in the middle of a hurricane.
Not long ago in the Neuroanatomy lab, I witnessed a different kind of learning moment that reinvigorated me and inspired a new motivation for my teaching.
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Last semester a student approached me after a quiz question had left him disorientated. He wasn’t sure how to recognize a brain structure from a perspective that he wasn’t used to. It inspired the post ‘Navigating Neuroanatomy’ and also helped me to realize that learning anatomy is all about learning the relationships between structures.
The following semester, that same student was the only one in his class to correctly answer a very disorientating question on a horizontal brain slice during the lab quiz. I approached him after class to congratulate him. He had a huge smile on his face and then he quoted what I had said to him last semester. “It’s all about the relationships, right?”
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I felt immense pride in seeing his success. I don’t have any kids of my own, but I imagine that this feeling was similar to what a parent might feel when watching their children make good decisions based on the values and principles that they were raised with.
And this success was completely his. His learning wasn’t a light bulb moment caused by one of my brilliant explanations. It was something better and more resilient, a construction of his own understanding. It was the result of his own efforts with some minor guidance on my part. He took the strategies that I had shared with him to understand the information and apply the principles to solve a new problem that was presented to him.
This moment reminded me of the adage, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” And it made me consider the idea that maybe,
It’s more satisfying to teach someone to fish than to give them a fish.
Similarly, maybe it’s more satisfying for the teacher to teach students how to learn rather than only teaching them what to learn. My current motivation for teaching has less to do with creating light bulb moments in students and more to do with helping students to grow as confident and autonomous learners.
On my part, the ongoing challenge when teaching is to practice humility and self-assurance. I have to remind myself that it’s not about me, the teacher. It’s not about having students need me, or impressing students with how much knowledge I have and trying to transfer it to them.
It’s about them, the learner. Now that I know the feeling of playing a small role in a student’s own success, it’s a feeling that I’ll continue to chase.
Keep learning,
Dr. K
Comment below:
What is your motivation for teaching and how has it changed during your teaching career?
Mastering Clinical Anatomy 