A Teacher’s Thoughts

After many discussions and readings about content versus skills in eduction I remembered an experience I had in early in graduate school. I was in the biology library one evening trying to figure out what to do a thesis on. I had been at it for several weeks at that point, though I wasn’t frustrated. I went through a variety of thinking rituals that had helped me get through college, you know, pacing, staring out the window, flipping through a few semi-related journals when it hit me. I just simply didn’t know enough to even think about what it was I was trying to think about. This was a completely different feeling for me. I had experienced the lack of recall moments on tests, the “oops, didn’t study that part” feeling and the brick wall of too many failed attempts, but this was unlike any of that. I simply had nothing, no starting point for thinking.
The next day, I began some very basic readings (this wasn’t pre-web, but there was little out there) from a variety of texts and journals. I began to build the content background that I needed to move ahead. It worked and eventually I had a thesis topic.

This is what I would like for my students to do. Feel a need for information, then go and get it. But in order to even get started there must be some information present to motivate the process. This is where content is king. Without some content background students will not even see the problem I hope that will try to solve. They may see no reason to communicate or collaborate, or think critically because they see, well, nothing.