Topher

Certified Tutor

I am at my happiest when I'm teaching. There is a certain thrill in helping someone else understand something better than they did before. I think for me, that excitement comes from the collaborative method I use when helping students through material. As an undergraduate philosophy instructor, I got to work with students from a number of different backgrounds. Each of them brought something new to the material, whether it was a section from Descartes they'd read twenty times before, or a new essay on nationalism that came out last week, they could always find something new in the material. When they had trouble understanding the material, I could ask them questions about what they thought was accurate or false in the essay. I could ask why they thought that way. I could show the student how they should question the material by asking them the types of questions they needed to ask.

To me, this is the core of teaching towards understanding - teaching a student how to continue teaching themselves. There is a time and place for lectures and so-called information dumps. The real work for the student and the teacher, though, comes from the dialogue about why the material matters or how an idea works. Not that a historical event happened but what made it happen. Not the mere fact that mathematical formulas work but why they work and what that can achieve. This is what makes learning interesting for students and instructing a joy for teachers - the process and the dialogue. It doesn't mean learning is always fun - it can certainly be tedious at times for both parties. But this approach has, for me, been the most successful in demonstrating the value of continued study.