To me, education is what life is all about. Striving to understand the world around us makes us who we are as a people. As a student myself, I think it is important to have the determination to seek one’s own education. This does not just define attending school, but how one participates in their classes. The best student is the one who is actively interested in learning and can take it upon themselves to find the answers they are looking for.
As I taught my two lab classes this semester, I focused mainly on putting interest in the students’ minds to find answers on their own. While my lectures did give background information and explained much of the lab procedure, I believe that to truly learn a subject is to work through procedures on one’s own, giving much thought to each complex question and trying one’s best to give the best answer. Therefore when I finished my lecture portion of the lab, I let the students work through their lab work mostly on their own. If they have a question, then I do my best to answer it, but when I can I try to make them answer their own question by helping them work through the concepts of the subject.
One of the most confusing questions in my lab experience this semester dealt with whether or not diatomaceous earth was a form of biological control, a biological control being a living organism controlling the spread of another organisms. Diatomaceous earth comes from living organisms, but it is essentially fossilized remains of diatoms. To help students answer their question, I asked what diatomaceous earth was and what was would categorize it as a biological control. The students then thought through the question and saw that biological controls required a living organism, which diatomaceous earth was not, and thus the student was able to find their own solution to their question.
Another example came in the same lab, where students were looking at specimens of invasive species and their biological controls. Next to the specimens were pages of information about each specific specimen, such as their common and scientific name, role, and origin. In one particular pair of an invasive species and its biological control, the origin was labeled on the invasive species, but not on its biological control. This invasive species was the Brown Widow spider, and its control was the Brown Widow parasitoid fly. As the students came up for their workbooks to be checked off, many of them had left the origin blank for the parasitoid. When asked why they merely replied that it was not on the information page. I asked each person who replied with that answer where they thought it came from. If they could not think of it, then I would ask what it parasitized, where its host lived, and if they thought the parasite would have the same origin as the host. All the students who I asked eventually thought it out and put it all together and saw that this parasitoid needed to be in the same origin as the host. In the end, giving small hints to the answer teaches them that most questions can be solved through individual critical thinking and also starts them on a path of wondering what else they can understand using their own minds.
Leading students to answer their own questions then allows them to build excellent professional qualities. They earn independence as people see that they are capable of thinking and working on their own. And through independence, they build confidence in themselves and their work, knowing that they have what it takes to understand and work through any problem. Then there is the management quality that students develop through the critical thinking and group projects they used in class. A student with these qualities may sound unrealistic, but it should be what every student who spends over a year in an educational institution should want to be.
As I have gone through my educational career, I have seen dropouts, slackers, and those that just do not care about the material. It is a great sadness to have to see these people wasting away their minds. It is understandable that not all subjects are fascinating, but I believe teachers have the ability to make it more bearable and allow for more interest in the more intriguing parts. This is why I would want to teach. I would attempt to show students that their interests matter and lead them towards reaching their goals by helping them to develop a thirst for knowledge. Just like how those people who were unable to gain an institutional education taught themselves, students can be shown that they can be taught both in school and by themselves. My teaching philosophy is to lead students to do exactly that.
